Carp on the dry fly

When the weather gets hot, ALAN COOKLIN turns to carp on the fly

Last year, during a long hot spell that all but closed my local still waters down, I made a number of short trips to a fishery not far from Milton Keynes. Spending no more than £70 on tickets, most of which were half-day, I took about 60 fish ranging between 2lb and 9lb. All were taken at or just beneath the surface on standard fly tackle. Some larger specimens left me with a straightened hook. The objects of my attentions were carp.

None of this would be news to fly fishers in the USA, where scores of websites sing the praises of what was once considered a ‘trash’ fish. Over here the voices are few, but they speak with conviction. Leading big trout stalker, Peter Cockwill, has written about the “huge pleasure” he gets from catching carp on the fly. Search the web for fishing instructor Steve Yeomans - no stranger to the columns of FF&FT - and you will find an absorbing account of his stalking techniques for bringing double-figure carp to flies both wet and dry.

For the many little-and-often trout fishers like me, small fisheries swiftly lose their sparkle as temperatures reach summer levels. Waiting for an evening rise is no longer fun when nine o’clock comes and nothing has moved. If I turn to carp, where sustained surface action is commonplace, it is with the comforting thought that here is a fish that positively thrives in the very conditions that trout can barely tolerate.

Venues
Lakes to avoid are those frequented by session carpers ( the “bivvie boys”) whose lives are dedicated to beating their personal bests (“PBs”) which in many cases will stand at 30 lb plus. Typically these fisheries provide a home for a small population of monsters (“lumps”) that are known by name and are meticulously weighed (and sometimes tenderly kissed) each time they succumb.

At the other end of the scale there is the fast growing number of ‘match waters’ where leading players frequently bag more than 200lb of carp (perhaps ranging between 2lb and 12lb) at one sitting. Your local tackle dealer should be able to suggest one or two that are reasonably mature and not too overgrown. Check that fly-rodding is permitted and that no major match has been scheduled for your chosen day, which should be warm with little wind.
With light scatterings of floating dog or cat food pellets (get a catapult for your freebies) you should not be short of opportunities to chuck your fly at sighted fish. Happily, the freebies (with a question mark over bits of bread) do not deter the carp from sampling your artificial. What gives you the edge over surface-fishing coarse anglers (who are increasingly using artificial baits) is the ability, space permitting, to lift off and change direction in an instant.
Sooner or later you will wish to graduate to a ‘stalking water’, the kind that Steve has written about. As well as peace and quiet, you will be looking for a population of sizeable fish, say in the 10lb to 20lb range, cruising in water sufficiently clear to allow you to peer to a depth of two feet or more. Freebies will be sparingly used, if at all. Commercial waters of this kind do exist, but you may have to consider joining a club or syndicate.

Basic tackle
For match waters your everyday #6 or #7 outfit will do quite well, one size up will do even better. On graduating you should think in terms of a #9 or #10. The extra backbone is needed, not only to steer the fish away from snags (well programmed into the carp’s memory), but also to lift its head into the air as soon as possible – a manoeuvre that has an amazing immobilising effect for as long as the rod is raised. Coping with long surging runs calls for a reel with a strong check. My leader for surface work is about 9 feet of 8lb mono.

Carp on the wet fly
My hunger for surface action has left me with only limited experience of wet fly tactics. This has got to change. The few attempts I have made confirm reports that this has to be a powerful weapon on stalking waters, the good news being that you are seldom fishing totally blind. Carp that cannot be seen may still betray themselves by releasing bubbles and stirring up clouds of silt.
If only trout were as obliging.

The advice is to retrieve very slowly and expect the gentlest of takes. Steve reports excellent results with epoxy-based Buzzers, and buoyant Snail patterns fished to a sinking line. The American sites speak highly of Woolly Buggers and Goldhead Nymphs, as well as various imitations of leeches, shrimps and crayfish, these being weighted so as to kick up a give-away puff of silt while being retrieved.

Even when surface fishing there are times when the best presentation is “on the drop”, a strong case for slimming down a couple of your otherwise floating patterns.

Problems when fishing dry
When a number of carp are visibly feeding on a match water you can be pretty sure of catching one or two on any large dry pattern, say a Shadow Mayfly or a Deer Hair Sedge. However, it will not be long before it occurs to you that all is not quite right. The translucence so valued in trout fishing does not go down quite so well with carp. This is hardly surprising as the only ‘hatch’ worth matching is the daily cascade of freebies. Like Peter Cockwill, you will also be puzzled by the number of times that an apparently perfectly timed strike fails to make contact. The fault, I suggest, lies in the horizontal profile presented by the conventional dry fly. In my experience, the most confident takes tend to come from fish that have risen almost vertically, such fish having presumably decided, at leisure, that there was no need to investigate further.
The obvious solution was to create an upright-sitting version of a Suspender Buzzer. To give it a bit more bounce and to deal with the much heavier hook, all I had to do was enlarge the foam suspension at the top. Or so I thought. As things turned out, the hooking rate dropped to near zero. A fresh difficulty had arisen, which I now call the ‘gob stopper problem’. Time and again the enlarged Suspender, though well and truly engulfed, pulled out on the strike. The explanation lay in the way that ‘old rubber lips’ (as the fish is called in some quarters) lived up to its name. The fly was seldom grabbed. In scenes recalling an up-market wine tasting it was sampled and savoured, but hardly ever swallowed.

The dry fly problem solved
I cannot say that the answer came in a flash, but it did come eventually in the shape of the three models shown in the photographs. Each is based on a variation of the Suspender Buzzer that places two or more “bobs” on a thread that forms a hinge just behind the eye of the hook. It works: a vertical profile is assured and you can add all the buoyancy you need without creating a ‘gob stopper’.

As an additional feature the hook sports a marabou skirt. When duly wetted, this offers a floater-emerger combination that has proved itself on a number of occasions when the only sign of a take was a fast-sinking bob.

The hook specification is quite critical, and I strongly suggest that you tie your first efforts to a size 8 Kamasan B175, or its apparent clone, the Fulling Mill 31530. The hinge is made from whipping thread (used for binding rod rings). So far, successful colours for the skirt have been olive and an ivory shade of white. Bobs have scored in yellow, orange and white. Choice will largely be dictated by considerations of visibility. Not surprisingly, ringing the changes can pay dividends.

The deer-hair version shown in the first photograph serves particularly well when visibility is poor, the advantage being that you can use a relatively large bob, say 8mm diameter, without running into the aforementioned ‘gob stopper’ problem.

Alan Cooklin describes how to make bobs in the June 2003 issue of FF&FT