{Tidal Potomac Fly Rodders} Bethy's first NSH -- I lost the biggest fish of my life and wet my pants

Hey!  Had a stellar day fishing off the *allegedly* dirty Potomac today.  I was using a TFO finesse 389 and Beth had a little UL spin combo.  She's cleaning the SH as we speak in our bathtub -- a good 25" fish according to the top of our cooler.  Man that guy is slimy....

 

I managed to hook the biggest fish I've ever hooked on a fly rod, what I'd estimate to be about a 10-12 pound carp.  He ran out all my line into the backing and went way the heck downstream, pulling my kayak.  After a while he went straight for a nasty snag under a concrete pillar.  Then *boom, line when limp.   I'm so depressed it's unbelievable.  Defeated.  I keep going over the fight in my head and questioning why I didn't try to lead him a different way, etc.  I even jumped out of the kayak to get a better position, but nada -- gone. 

 

Okay -- I'm going to get myself together, because we had a great day and I'm so lucky to have married a woman who fishes it seems pointless to get too upset about it ;). 

 

Sight casting to carp and snakeheads is some of the most fun, challenging fishing I've done with the fly rod.  I needed a weighted fly to get down to the carp, but a weighted fly causes the "splash" issue often...and I definitelyt spooked a few (dozen). The only way I found to hook one of these carp was to cast into the future of the predicted path and let it sink.  Then, hope they keep moving in the right direction and twitch it a bit.  Seeing one of those huge suckers make the "fish face" and suck in the fly is like a rock concert man!  So now I know when I see someone catch a carp on a fly rod, it probably wasn't quite how I pictured it -- much of it is clairvoyance and just being lucky.  For me anyway. 

 

Going to ditch the finesse for the 9' 8-weight tomorrow.  

 

Gene

 

 

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