Reports

Got out today from 9 am till 7 pm with my buddy Shahab. We fished hard! We started looking for lake trout and didn’t find much to report. We had scattered fish marked in mostly deep water – around 130′ to 140′ give or take. No definite hits. Fish still seem to be pretty dormant. Later on we scanned shallower water and found some fish in around 90′ – but they still didn’t move much for the jigs. I’d give it another week or two of warm temperatures – it will get better and better by the week!

The big goal today was to put a few of my carp “cold water” theories to the test. Shahab is an accomplished carp fly-fisherman so it was great having him aboard and getting his opinions/feedback. We are starting to pattern these fish and today was a great start. We found great numbers of fish in 1′ to probably 6′ of water. We fished blind – mainly casting around fish we saw, but not at individual fish. We foul-hooked a fair number of carp up to around 35″ and well over 20lbs, but the good news is we had at least 3 fish just hammer the flies! One fish was hooked deep – the whole fly pretty much down the fish’s mouth. The fishing got better as the day went on (and water warmed up) and my 2 fish that hit came within an hour of each other! Water temps hit over 52 degrees. We saw one gar as well.

There’s no doubt in my mind that blind casting to giant carp in these lakes is a viable, repeatable fishing pattern! It’s great fun and I’ll be devoted a significant amount of time and effort to it in the future. To have hundreds, if not thousands of these massive, strong fish around – fish that will hit flies, is unbelievable. There’s no doubt in my mind that in 10 to 20 years fly-fishing for carp in freshwater will be popular and the equivalent of fishing redfish and bonefish in the salt. Each fish pulled us into our backing! We took tons of photos and will be posting them as we get them. The thought of eventually hooking 30 to 40lb+ carp on the flyrods is enough to keep “carpin’ on my mind”!

carp cayuga lake fly-fishing