I Will Catch a Carp on the Fly This Year

Just saw this awesome video over at one of my favorite local blogs, Mike's Catch Report.  I don't know if it's the music, the ridiculously huge carp taking flies off of the surface, or the sick casts that this guy pulls off, but it has reinforced my determination to catch a carp this year on the fly.  Fortunately for us here in Charlottesville, there are numerous places we can go to try and make it happen.



In other news, not much fishing going on for me these next two weeks as I still have a ways to go before I take my board exam.  As for the others: Rich will soon be departing for a ridiculously awesome trip, Kyle truly is making the catch of a lifetime, and I suspect that Scott has a post coming up soon about his recent trip down in southwest Virginia.

If you are curious, the reports from around the area have been that the fishing is good and that the water levels are finally starting to calm down.  With all of this beautiful weather we're having, I suspect there will be some perfect opportunities to see some great hatches going on.

Fishing Report: Smith Mountain Lake

I hope everyone got to go out and fish a little this past Memorial Day weekend since the weather (at least here in Virginia) was perfect. Water levels had calmed down significantly allowing for some killer action all over the state.

For my three day weekend, I headed down to Smith Mountain Lake to fish/relax with my frat brothers. We stayed in an awesome condo courtesy of Matherne. Early in the morning on Saturday before a trip to Bojangles for some artery clogging breakfast, Matherne and I hit up the lake in search of striper and largemouth. Without a fishfinder, it became pretty clear that we'd have a hard time finding the striper unless they started actively feeding on the surface. We then resorted to throwing plastic worms (my favorites being the Gary Yamamoto 5 inch worms in green pumpkin, watermelon, and pumpkin). That morning we ended up hooking two good sized bass and losing one of them. I'd guess that they were about 3 lbs each.

After about 9 a.m., the action pretty much died off as the speedboats and jetskis hit the water.

At about 6 p.m., however, the fishing got better. The bass, as far as I could tell were still in their spawning beds close to shore so I headed out on my kayak and caught several more decent bass.

Probably some of the best fishing was done at night off of the dock. The first night, Dylan and I caught a couple bass and brim (I was using bass poppers and my fly rod). The second night Dylan showed up everyone and caught a huge largemouth. Finally, the last night, after Dylan caught a large crappie using a senko, we decided to catch some of the huge carp that pooled up around the dock lights. Using just some plain old hooks, bobbers, and balls of bread, we caught 6 of these mammoths. I'm not going to lie, they are some pretty gross fish but they sure do fight hard and long.

Overall, SML is a great place to fish. It's got a very healthy variety of fish and plenty of space for them to grow large. Thanks again to Matherne for letting us stay at his place.