Winter Carp
Been cold 'round these parts lately. The rivers is too low, water's too clear. The steelheads won't truck with low and clear water. Blue sky too, that don't help t'all.
I didn't want to have to do it, but likes I told the wife, "There's no choice, I have to go carpin'."
Angling for thee winter carp is a gamble on the account of all the ducks that that have to be rowed up; sun, water, ice and wind have to be proportioned just right.
I string up my fly rod and tie on an orange crawfish, #6. Then I pulls my waders up over two pairs of long skivvies and one pair wool pants 'cuz I know that the waters gonna be cold. There's snow on the ground, just enough to cover the rocks and sagebrush. All that whiteness makes it real bright so I don my polarized glacier glasses. Air's cold too so I pulls up my balaclava.
The shallowest parts of the flats is frozen over solid but walking around on the ice is easier than wading through boot deep mud. I makes my way out to The Reef. It aint any kind of reef t'all, just a sunken island that has anywheres from one to three feet of water over it.
An ice cap hovers over yonder island like a lenticular over a mountain top. Conditions are about perfect: cold enough to freeze but plenty of sunshine to warm up the carps and the crawfish.
With the sun high enough over this desert reservoir the crawfish crawl along the top of the submerged island towards the sunlight at the edge of the ice cap. For awhile they warm themselves in safety even though they are fully exposed to the yellow light of the winter sun.
The first sortie of large, slow moving fish, glides along the ice shadow like so many dirigibles over a beach head and the crawfish are caught unawares. A half dozen of their number are lost to the hungry maws of three stealthy carp. The rest of the tiny crustaceans scuttle back to the safety of shade and ice.
But the warmth of the sun is too much to resist and them crawfish have short memories anyhow so, en masse, they crawl back toward the sunlight.
The carp, who are known to have better memories and superb hearing detect the clicking and scraping sounds their prey makes as it migrates across the rocks and clam shells to warmer water. In two's and three's more carp fin their way to what has become a buffet at the edge of shadow and light.
I considers myself a friend of all animals but the phenomenon that takes place before me holds a slight unfairness to the 'dads so I enter the melee on their behalf. To be fair and accurate I should report that it is my fly, the orange #6 crawfish pattern, that enters the melee but it is me that launches it into battle.
The results of my fly's forays into the abyss are predicable and entertaining. Not so much fun for the piggish koi who resent having to pull against my rod in such cold, but lots of fun for me and I can't help but think that the shy little crawdads appreciate the slight reprieve from predation.