From the Jan-Feb 98 North American Carp Angler

Beginners Corner - Flyfishing for Carp by Joe Shea

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North American Carp Angler

Joe Shea has agreed to discuss how to use a fly rod to catch carp. He does this reluctantly because he gave up his fly fanaticism years ago and is afraid he will be spending his winter nights tying flies to the wee hours of the morning. "Besides", he says, "I don't need another hobby." Nonetheless, here are a few basic ideas. MJ Keyes - Editor

Q.: Why should I fly fish for carp?

A: For fun, for the challenge, and because sometimes the only way to present a bait to a carp is with a fly rod. A good example is carp feeding on the top of the water. In North America this usually occurs because someone has been feeding fish or the ducks with bread or floating catfish food. When carp are spooked easily (which is a lot of the time, ed.), any unnatural presentation will put them off. You can use a controller float or you can drift bread out, but no technique gives you the combination of flexibility, and stealth that fly fishing does. In addition, you can emulate a number of other techniques such as float fishing or legering (bottom fishing) with a fly rod although, admittedly, it is not the same thing. The main reason, though, is to have an alternative when nothing else works. Fishing for carp on broad inland lake flats is ideal for fly fishing or jig fishing. You can cast to tailing or rising carp, or you can throw a fly in a group of fish rooting in the bottom. Fly fishing offers the chance to vary presentation by changing the type of line or the weight of the bait. It does have it's limits, however.

Q: What are those limits?

A: The obvious ones, of course, are the problems with casting. Your distance is limited to thirty or forty yards at most and you have to have a clear area behind you if you want to do any distance casting at all. In addition the technique has to be learned over a period of time usually with the help of a teacher. Of course, baitcasting is the same, a difficult technique (more difficult than fly casting in my opinion, ed.) that has to be taught and practiced. Fly fishing is not as "natural" as spinning or spincasting. By this I mean that you know that the bait is the casting weight and that you throw it with the rod. In fly fishing you throw the line and not the bait. The idea of fly fishing is that a very light bait is carried along with the line and lands gently on the water emulating a natural event such as an insect falling on the water. This takes a little doing and a lot of practice. But since we are not throwing dry flies, your technique doesn't have to be perfect except when you are casting to rising fish. If you place the line right across the nose of a carp, she will probably take off and never come back. But this is true of all styles of fishing for carp. Other limits include the cost of the equipment, the amount of preparation that has to go into a trip, and the lack of familiarity that most anglers have with fly fishing.

Q: Tell me about fly rods.

A: There are a lot of myths surrounding the selection of a good fly rod. Remember, fly fishing is thought of as an upscale market by the rod manufacturers. As a result, a good intermediate rod will cost about twice as much as a comparable spinning or casting rod. In addition, you will find $1000 dollar rods for those who can afford such luxuries. But you don't have to go that route.

A decent graphite or a good fiberglass rod may be preferable to an expensive rod. And there is no reason to get a bamboo rod for carp fishing. Fly rods are designed to cast a line of specific weight. Lines weights are determined by the first thirty feet and are numbered 1 through 12, the higher number being heavier. The average trout line is rated as a 6 and the rod used to cast a 6 wt. line may be seven to nine feet long. A six weight rod can handle a small carp, but an 8 wt. line is more likely to bring the fish in. So the higher the line weight., the more robust the rod. Most rods have an all-through action similar to a typical English carp rod but are less stiff than the carp rod because they are designed to wear the fish out without pulling the bait from the fish.

Recently there has been a trend towards a progressive action with a fast tip in order to throw the line farther and faster. You will have to look at a few rods before you make a decision on the one you want. I make my own rods and have an 8 wt. nine foot rod with an extended butt (called a fighting butt) to fish carp. It has the guts to work a carp without fully loading up. It is a little heavy, but it gets the job done.

Q: Tell me more about the line.

A: You are probably use to having a single monofilament line of known weight on your reel. Fly fishing systems use three different lines, often more, in order to achieve their goals. The first is the fly line itself which serves as a throwing weight and bite indicator. The fly line also determines how fast the bait sinks or whether it sinks at all depending on the type of line you use.

There are two basic types, sinking and floating, but this is complicated by the selection of sink rates right up to lead core. Fly lines come in a variety of casting configurations designed for specific types of presentation. The most common type used in carp fishing is probably the so-called weight forward lines which put the majority of weight in the front of the line by increasing the diameter of the line in the first few yards of line. The angler is able to cast this type of line farther and faster but the bait is usually going faster when it hits the water.

The next type of line is the tippet. Usually made of a series of loop to loop lengths of varying sizes of monofilament, the tippet attaches the fly to the fly line and can be up to nine feet long or longer. Tippet design is an art in itself but as a beginner, you can buy ready made tippets. The tippets run from very light to very heavy in line strength. Monofilament is the most common material, but now there are tippets made from braided line which have incredible strength for their diameter.

Look at a tippet as a long leader which is the fighting part of the line. Since there is a lot of changing of bait in fly fishing you should be prepared to change the last section of the tippet out frequently. I use a loop to loop tie to make things easy. The third type of line is the backing. Most fly lines are too short to handle a carp without running out, so you have to tie the other end of the fly line to a narrow diameter, low stretch line to help avoid these problems. Most reels will take between 100 and 200 yards of backing and you should make sure that the reel is full in order to be able to cast well and not run into problems with a carp running to the end of the line.

Q: What about reels? I thought all they did was hold the line.

A: That is true for the most part, but if you get into a big fish, you will want a reel with a drag or at least the capacity to palm the reel to slow the fish down. You can get a reel for $20 or one for $500 with corresponding bells and whistles. You are better off with a quality reel, even if it is a simple pawl and click drag. The salt water reels have built in drags which allow you play the fish on the reel. These cost more, of course.

Q: How would I fish for carp with a fly rod?

A: For a beginner, I would select a rod with some guts, an 8 wt. fiberglass, for example, and fish sweetcorn on a hook over a groundbait of sweetcorn. I know this is fly fishing heresy, but you want to learn what it feels like to catch a carp on a fly rod before you get too fancy. Carp are not trout. Carp fight harder pound for pound and they weigh more on the average. Fly rods are inefficient levers compared to spinning rods or bait rods and tend to put a lot of pressure on the angler. Line control is crucial with fly rods and since there is no drag on many of the reels, you have to control the output of line manually. This takes some practice so it is best to learn on smaller carp. Once you have mastered the small carp you can move on up to bigger ones. But this takes a little more style and technique.

Q: Like what?

A: As you know, the bigger a carp is, the smarter and more experienced it is. At some point you will have to learn how to hunt the larger carp and stalk them for the capture. This will involve more stealth and a lot more preparation. The best way is to groundbait an area where you know fish are eating and then wait until there are signs of fish before you start casting.

The way the carp are feeding will determine what type of presentation you use. If they are feeding on rising larvae, you might want to use an artificial that emulates the target food and a slow sinking. If they are feeding on the top, do the same but with a floating line. Top feeding behavior can be triggered by proper groundbaiting with bread or floating food. I'd wait until the fish are in a frenzy until I put a fly or hookbait on the top.

One of the things you will need to learn to do is to cast without upsetting the carp. Rising carp are usually moving and you have to get the bait in front of them. You don't want to "line" the carp or they will be gone and so will their friends. There is a narrow area in which your bait will be seen unless you add flavor or taste to the bait. If you see fish tailing or rooting on the bottom, use a sinking line and place the bait of to the side of the baited area nearest to you. Again you don't want to spook the fish with the line.

Carp eat crawfish, baitfish, insect larvae, worms, snails, and insects in addition to the corn you have laid out. If you are groundbaiting properly, you will have picked a place where the fish normally eat. This means that the occasional crawfish in a field of corn is not unusual and the variety might attract a good fish.

None of these ideas should be foreign to the carp angler as they are variations of other techniques. But the advantage of fly fishing lies in its ability to be very specific to a specific fish. You will need to either pick out a fish or an area you know has larger fish and then find what the fish will bite. If it is that same groundbait you have applied to the fish's environment then you need to either use bait or an artificial that looks, smell, and acts like the groundbait. If you think that the carp will eat a nymph or a crawfish imitation, then make sure you put the fly in the right place with he right action.

Q: Gee, this all sounds very complicated.

A: In the beginning, it is not. Like all styles of fishing, the more you know, the more you learn. As you get into the details of fishing you will begin to discern patterns of fish behavior and you will get better at presentation and predicting the fish's reactions. All fishing is learning to stay one step ahead of the fish. Fly fishing can offer a wide variety of presentation styles and techniques which you have to be familiar with in order to implement them. The same is true of legering and float fishing.

Fish don't always bite the baits you put in front of them until they act either in an expected way (aggressive fish) or an unexpected way (neutral and negative fish). You have to find a way to get the fish to take your bait or to change behaviors and then take the bait you offer. Groundbaiting is a method which changes some fish to an aggressive mode as does making your bait look lie a fleeing fish. Sometimes the cues are by smell, lateral line, sound, or salt content. We never know exactly, but we can give good educated guesses and work from there.

So fly fishing, like all angling, can become complex, especially if you are after large fish.

Q: What about fly tying?

A: Because there is such a large variety of triggers (read baits) out there, you cannot possibly have or afford the number of artificial baits it takes to fish in a variety of venues. So you learn to make your own baits. You do it with bait legering, so why not with artificial baits. I know people who only tie flies, they don't fish them, just tie them and then give them away. You don't have to be like that, but sometimes only a specific pattern will work, even with trout who are not as picky at times as carp. The advantage a carpist has is that it is all right to tie a fly whose primary feature is that it looks and tastes like a piece of corn. Since the idea is to "match the hatch" and the hatch in this case is a groundbait of sweetcorn, you are still in the spirit of the fly fishing ideal.

So, bottom line, learn to tie if you want to, there are plenty of good books and great ideas out there.

Q: So what do you recommend for equipment?

A: If you have a fly rod and reel already, try them. Most likely you have a 6/7 wt. rod with a cheap reel and forward weight line. Get a beginners fly fishing book and learn to cast without putting a know in the fly line. Then try the legered corn using the line as a bite indicator. Once you learn what a carp is like on the end of your line you will see if you have adequate equipment. If you are new to fly fishing and want to try it out, I suggest getting a beginner rod and reel set in the 6/7 wt. range.

I know that I told you that an 8 wt. I best for carp, and I stand by that, but not until you have decided to dedicate a rod to the sport. Berryman in his book, Carp on the Fly states that a 6 wt. is ideal. Of course, he may never have caught a large carp and doesn't have a clue, but he is right in that you can catch and bring in a 10 pound carp on a 6 wt. rod with a strong tippet. Sinking line is best at first as you are gong to be legering most of the time anyway. Once you have the confidence to go after larger fish you can learn the other presentations.

Joe Shea as told to Mike Keyes

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