Fly Fishing For Carp Survey Results: Carpin's Dirty Little Secret

Fly fishing for carp has a dirty little secret. I am willing to share that secret but you gotta promise to keep it between us OK? Actually, I change my mind. Please share the hell out of this because I think it could really help people new to the game gain critical perspective.

The secret is this: It turns out that you don't have to cast very far to catch carp. As matter of fact it turns out you barely need to be able to cast at all - at least in the traditional sense. I bet some of you don't believe me, but that is OK because I come armed with data!

The following graph charts the distances where the 200+ respondents to our recent fly fishing for carp survey catch the most carp. Well over 50 percent of the respondents fly fishing for carp survey catch most of their carp at less than 20 feet. Almost 90 percent of the participants catch most of their carp at less than 40 feet. Most shocking of all perhaps, about 17 percent of them catch most of their carp at dapping range!!!!!

  
The Internet has spent years and years convincing us that only master fly casters can catch carp on the fly.  Well, sorry to disappoint, but at least when it comes to distance it just is not true!  Personally I would actually counter that even trying to catch them at any significant range is usually counter-productive and damaging.

Now, that does not mean that a certain level of skill doesn't help - just that distance has absolutely nothing to do with it!  Getting close and presenting the fly are actually orders of magnitude more important.  Instead of practicing casting a line 80 feet you should first work on mastering your crouching tiger stalking heron. Once you have gotten the hang of getting close you should master several different short range casts and presentations that make a huge difference - some of which can be seen here:

Presenting The Fly to Carp - The Calm Before The Storm

In Football I think they call it happy feet - when a quarterback in never comfortable enough to just settle down in the pocket, set his feet and let the ball fly.   Well, there is an equivalent in Fly Fishing for Carp and I used to have it.  I used to have it bad.  Lets call it the fly fidgets.

Well, over the past year I have finally beat the fly fidgets.  It started in October when I finally got glasses. My improved vision gave me a level of confidence in my presentation and take detecting I had never had before. Those new glasses took a little getting used to, but by December I was knocking it dead.  I couldn't necessarily tell you exactly why - just that the glasses had made some kind of difference.

Then in December John Montana put out a post on not moving your fly.  It was nothing new to me conceptually, but it had always been difficult for me in reality.  Well, at about the same time I got a Go-Pro and I started to get some footage of me hooking carp (video1, video2, video3).  Because of John's post, not moving the fly was central to my mind and upon reviewing that footage I often noticed where there was a moment when I would go completely motionless between presenting the fly and setting the hook. The cool thing was that the video would take me back to those moments and I could re-feel a moment of complete and total calm and confidence.  A moment where time would almost stand still and my fly would not move at all.   A moment that I could clearly recognize as new since I had gotten the glasses and the increased confidence in the presentation the take detection they brought.

Once I re-lived those moments and those feelings, suddenly I found I could capture them. Contain them. Accentuate them.  Now, six months later, not only do I almost never move the fly after presenting it, I have found that there is a whole new and different class of take that I never even knew existed.

A Carp Caught On a Delayed Reaction Take Of The Fly

Previously if a carp did not react to my fly in the first split second after it hit bottom I believed that the carp had not noticed it.  At that point I would try and twitch it or strip it in order to draw attention.  Now I have learned differently.  In the last six months I have learned that some carp - MANY carp - will ONLY take my fly after a delayed reaction of a second or even two without the fly moving!  As a matter of fact, I now think that many carp that I had previously thought unwilling to eat were just more patient than I was. 

Another Carp On A Delayed Reaction Take Of The Fly

It turns out that now we - and by we I mean the carp and I - both have a calm before the storm.  A moment between action and inaction.  A moment when the predator waits but then pounces.  Find that feeling, and your carpin will take a big step forward.  

Video: Suspended Dap

Hard rabid tailing carp can be infuriating. Often they can be surprisingly hard to catch since the carp can't find your fly in their own dustcloud and you can't figure out when they take the fly amid all the choas. If you can get close enough to dap the fly one presentation to try is suspending the fly just a couple of inches off the bottom at the edge of the dust cloud.

 

Underhand Flip Cast for Carp

I have been having fun making videos lately.   I am no Spielberg but sometimes it is so much easier to show something than explain it in writing.  Here is another one, this time on the underhand flip cast which is a very useful tool for presenting the fly to carp in the 10 to 20 feet range.

Presenting the Fly to Carp: The Drag and Drop

The drag and drop presentation is one of the most important fly fishing for carp tools in my arsenal but some-how despite my best efforts I haven't adequately explained it.  Sometimes those things that are simple but oh so profound are the hardest to describe.  Hopefully this video does the trick:

Carp on the Flats

I have made a conscious choice to spend more time fishing wade-able flats on still-waters this summer. Between Lake Michigan and a couple of local lakes it has really paid off and I have had my best four months of fishing...ever. I would like to share a couple of tidbits that have been helping. Note that John Montana showed me all of this in my two trips out to Oregon. It just took some experimenting on my own for it all to sink in!

1) Structure:  Even on a flat structure matters! Look for transitions between soft mud, fine sand, coarse sand and gravel. Most transitions tend to concentrate carp. Combine a transition in bottom composition with a change in depth and you are really talking potential. In other words gravel bars rock!

Lake Michigan Gravel Bar Carp

2) Fear-Not the Deep:  While it is true that if you can find shallow carp they are often easier to catch that doesn't mean that you should always be wading in calf-deep water. When fishing gravel bars or shore-line give wading deep and looking shallow a try. This is an approach that had never occurred to me until John Montana showed it to me and it can be extremely effective. Additionally it is almost always true that there are more carp in knee-deep water than calf-deep. Whenever I can find enough clarity to have a chance I spend 80% of my time in knee-deep water.

A Mirror from the only knee deep water in a shallow bay

3) No Tunnel Vision:  I have a really hard time with tunnel vision. I will get into a mode where I am walking along focused on the bottom three feet in front of me. DON’T DO THAT!! It is a terrible mistake. Instead you should be constantly scanning out and back and if anything spend more time looking at a distance than close. That might be 50 to 60 feet in calf deep water or 30 feet in knee deep water.

A gravel bar 20 - spotted and caught from 40 feet away - ONLY because I was looking that far.

4) Drop-Pop-Pause-Set:  I have been spending a considerable amount of time fishing flats where the fish are keyed in on crayfish (or gobies in the case of Lake MI) this year. These fish are aggressive and will move to a simply stripped fly but really is not the the most effective presentation. One particularly effective presentation for me lately has been a Drop-Pop-Pause-Set. This starts with a drag and drop where I drop the fly just to one side of the head with a slightly raised rod. When the fly hits bottom I lightly pop it once (roughly 6” forward) with the rod and then kill the fly with a pronounced pause and then set the hook when the carp turns. There is a certain rhythmic quality to this presentation akin to slowly saying it. Drop-Pop-Pause-Set.

Drop-Pop-Pause-Set!

MUST ALWAYS Strip-Set Is a Dirty Word

I hear it on a regular basis.  You MUST ALWAYS strip-set carp.  I hate blind paradigms.

When should we not strip set carp on the fly?  For many of you my answer is going to be very surprising.  For some my answer is going to actually be offensive!  I trout set carp most of the time and I am going to tell you why you probably should as well.  Just please read on before you decide I am stupid.

First of all I certainly know how to strip-set.  Before carp I had a long and healthy addiction to blind fishing streamers for predatory fish.  For this style of fishing trout-set is a dirty word and for good reason!  When you are stripping streamers for predatory fish a trout set is just absolutely ridiculous.

So, why in the heck would it be different for carp?  Well, partially because MUST ALWAYS is actually the only dirty word for carp, but there are actual reasons.  Really good ones.

First of all 90% of the time you are not stripping streamers for carp.  You sure as hell shouldn't be at any rate.  There are exceptions.  There are always exceptions.  Remember, MUST ALWAYS is the only dirty word.  At certain times of year in certain bodies of water you can and should present a steadily swimming or stripped fly to carp but it is the exception not the rule!  Unfortunately this exception means that guys from Lake Michigan or Blackfoot Reservoir and similarly freakish fisheries are gonna think I am stupid.  So be it.

In general you are better off presenting the fly on a dead drop onto the dinner platter with little or no action.  Even when you do apply action it should be small twitches or strips with significant pauses.  As a result you may not be perfectly tight to the fly when the fish eats.  As a matter of fact it is often better to NOT be perfectly tight to the fly because carp often try and inhale the fly from a distance and If you have the fly under tension it can prevent it from getting to the carp.  The less tight you are to the fly the less effective a strip-set is.

Now second of all carp have soft mouths.  One of the arguments I have heard for strip-setting is that you cannot generate enough force with a trout-set.  That is true.  For Tarpon!  That is true for a whole lot of predatory species, but not Carp.  A Carp's mouth is tough but fleshy and not too dissimilar to the flesh on a persons hand.  So, I will make a deal for anybody who doesn't believe that I can trout-set with enough force to set the hook in a carp's mouth.  We will make a little bet.  You hold a hook in your hand.  I trout set.  Here is the bet.  I betcha it is gonna hurt like hell when I bury that hook all the way into the bend!  And no, I do not always remember to de-barb.

The third reason may be the most profound.  I call it carpin's dirty little secret.  You know how they say that 90% of fish caught fly fishing are within 50 feet?  Well for carp the number is really more like twenty feet.  Now given that you typically have a nine foot rod and a nine foot leader it turns out that most of the time if you have your rod-tip on the water and want to strip set under 20 feet your leader to line connection is going to be inside the guides.  Often when you strip set the leader knot is going to hang up on a guide and you won't set the hook at all!

Being close to the fish creates other issues with the strip-set.  Primarily, when you don't have any significant fly-line between you and the fish you don't have anything to absorb the shock of a strip set.  Unless you are really good at slipping the strip-set you are going to break off allot of close-in fish in the initial shock.   People who have just made the transition from SMB to carp are particularly likely to hold the strip-set too long and shock their leader.  Additionally, when you start to get within dapping range (lets call it 15 feet) strip setting starts to become extremely awkward from a physical  standpoint.  Imagine for example trying to strip-set when you only have three feet of line out and your rod-tip is directly above the carp's head.  It just doesn't work!

Now, another common argument for strip-setting carp is that you some-how get a better, deeper and more positive hook-set and land more fish with a strip-set.  I strongly dis-agree.  I trout set roughly 80 percent of the time and I land a shocking percentage of the carp I hook.  A stunning percentage.  Many people catch more carp than I do but I know of none who land them at a higher percentage.  I fully expect to land every single fish I hook and even though it doesnt always work that way I am legitimately pissed when it doesn't.

Often when I do lose a fish it is either because I had to strip-set and hooked it in the soft delicate skin lining of the roof of the mouth and it pulled out under heavy pressure or because I held the strip-set too long and broke it off.  Trout-setting seems to do a better job at lifting the fly up and burying it deeply into the strong rubbery upper lip, particularly at close range.

And finally, the best carp fisherman that I have ever fished with (John Montana) trout sets even more than I do!  As far as I can tell John Montana catches as many or more carp than anybody else in the country.  I have fished with him on multiple occasions.  His carp catching ability is awe inspiring.  You are going to have to argue hard and fast to convince me he is doing it all wrong.

So, when SHOULD you strip set for carp?

1)  You should usually strip set when fishing to carp at range.  Lets call it > 40 feet.
2)  You should always strip set if you absolutely have no chance of visually detecting the take because of poor or no visibility and must feel the take.
3)  When continuous stripping or swimming a fly.

That is about it folks.

CARPTORIOUS: SoftHackles On The Rise

Friday started well.  Wait, backup.  Friday started awfully.  Any moment on your fishin day off spent in the Department Of Motor Vehicle is one less moment on the water and therefore shear tortue.  After that is started well in that I landed a carp rather quickly on another iteration of my headstand fly that I have been working on for over a year now and just can't get right.  

After that things slowed down considerably.  I hooked and lost a couple more but mainly I got fixated  on a couple of very large carp I found and wasted allot of time on a hope and a dream.  It is pretty rare to find very very large (I am positive they were 30lb class) on my river in a fish-able situation.  They were onto me almost immediately but I couldn't drag myself away and three hours later I emerged from a tunnel-vision state to discover that much of the day was gone.  Worthy cause?  

Things got extremely interesting when after a couple more stops I found a big pod (at least 15) tailing furiously in a 2 foot deep side-water with some slow cruisers and shallow snoozers on the side.  I may stumble on a situation like this 2 or three times a year on my river and my hands were shaking as I tied on my first fly.  And my second fly.  And my third fly.  Every presentation resulted in my target fleeing in absolute terror the second they saw the fly.  I was ready to cry when eventually I stumbled upon the solution.  

The first half of the solution was a very small very discrete un-weighted olive soft-hackle on a size 8 scorpion gaper.  This gives you the body length of a size 12 or 14 nymph with a carp worthy gape and wire-gauge.  Un-weighted soft-hackles have saved my butt so many times this year, I am not sure why it took me so long.

The second part of the solution was a presentation I call "On The Rise".  

I learned this presentation last year in Oregon with John Montana and when it works it is by far and away my favorite take.  To trigger a rising take you try and drop and draw a lightly weighted fly on a slow arc parallel and down past the side of a tailing or slow cruising carp's head.  When the fly gets close to the mouth you slowly raise the rod and increase the draw so that it reverses course and arcs upward.  Perhaps this mimics the action of a rising nymph.  Perhaps it is just a trigger.  Who cares.  The sight of one (or two in this case) carp surging upward with mouth and gills pulsating furiously it is truly a sight to behold. 

Fly Fishing For Carp in Rivers: Ambush or Attack

I think I need to start to evolve and diversify my overall approach to the river.  I am familiar with two very different basic approaches on fly fishing for carp in rivers, but in the last year I have gravitated to one.

Lets call these two approaches "Ambush" and "Attack".  I enjoy them both, but I am a little better and certainly more experienced with the ambush method which is really a philosophy.  This year in the carp slam one of the main things I learned from Ty was that looking at the river in terms of ambush fishing has slipped from preference to habit to the point where it is holding me back.

Throw down some crappy graphics and I think we can use this small run I have fished a couple of times lately as an example.

This run has four critical sections.  Section A is the main current seam and the current is ripping.  Between the current ripples, depth and bottom structure they are hard to see.  There are fish holding in this seam, typically using rocks and weeds to break the current but I don't spend a whole lot of time trying for them.  Perhaps this is where indicator nymphing would come in handy if I was into it.

Section B is interesting.  We did see some very positive carp up in the extreme shallows on the left hand side when I was there last Friday.  Fish feeding with their backs out of the water are relatively rare in my river but if you find them and can keep a fly out of the weeds you are in business.  Whether you fish these carp from ambush or attack mode is strictly a function of which side you find them on.
   

Section C is a sand trough that slopes slowly from section B to the depths of the run.  Carp do not hold here but if you are lucky you will find a fairly steady stream of carp circulating up onto the sand from the current seam.  They will typically move up onto the sand on the bottom half of the run and make their way slowly to the top where they will hold briefly at the top of section C before planing back into the current seam and dropping back to start the cycle over.  Although negative and neutral carp will circulate in this fashion, some of the most positive carp in the river do too and therefore you are on the lookout for this behavior..

Section D is the current break on the right side of the river created by the bank.  The structure creates a narrow window of minimal current that carp can use to rest or feed.  Carp will either be holding in this area, circulating front to back or continuously dropping in and out of the main current in several areas.  Although you will occasionally find carp tailing against the bank, the most typical mood is neutral.  They aren't looking for food but won't kick it out of bed for eating crackers either.

This run can be approached in two very fundamental ways.

Attack:  If you are attacking this run you will fish it from the middle or left-hand side of the river.

You have absolutely no cover and stand out like a sore thumb.  Your only hope for not scaring the carp is as much distance as you can get and still achieve a good presentation.  Figuring out the best place to stand in order to achieve both is really the first key to this method.  Crouching helps as well but I usually find that if you want to have enough vision to really sight fish that you usually have to just stand tall and accept the risks of detection.

When I get this to work it is almost always on some form of downstream presentation that is not a simple swing.  A simple swing seems too fast and un-natural.  You might very well cast well ahead of and past the carp and swing it into the carp's path but once it is there if at all possible you want to "kill" the velocity of the fly with a mend, a change in stripping pattern or by just feeding some slack with a rod motion or angle.  You can also cast directly into the carp's path or cast past but not well ahead of the carp and get it into position with a long fast strip.  It all depends on the currents you are dealing with and the skittishness of the carp.  If that explanation seems inadequate that is because the whole process can be complicated.

Regardless the end goal is some combination of a slow seductive swim, short small hops, a truly dead fly or a nearly dead fly with twitches in the zone.  All are options that you have to experiment with if you actually get past the art form of killing the fly which is far from easy.



Pros:

• When you do hook a fish they are already aways from the run.  You have a decent chance of landing the fish without freaking out the entire run.  If the carp are extremely positive this gives you the chance to catch more than one carp in the run.
• You may have to roll cast or single handed spey cast but regardless most of the time you are actually getting to cast which is fun.
• When they are on the sand and positive you are putting yourself in a position to have a very good day.

 Cons:

• The balancing act between not getting made and being in position for an excellent presentation is difficult to judge and you will scare many many carp for every one that somehow fails to see you.
• The presentation itself is difficult for all but the most aggressive carp.
• If you don't find the right carp in the right mood you are way out of luck.  Even if you find fish in the correct positions it is hard to gauge their true mood and it is easy to waste time fishing to negative carp in this area of the river. 

In summary this method has always seemed like a bit of a boom or bust scenario.  In my opinion you are going to get skunked frequently, but occasionally you are going to go gangbusters.    

 Ambush:  In contrast if you want to ambush fish this run you are going to go run straight to the right-hand side of the run.  Actually you are going to creep your way straight to the right side.  Ambush fishing is 100% about stealth.

Cover, silence and slow motions are key.  Every motion is considered, every possible piece of cover is used.  If you can make the cast and see the take behind that 2 foot tall shrub you damned well better be crouched behind it.  If you can be sitting directly above the carp on a cliff and just dapping your fly on it's head even better.  

Even your casting methods are modified to use slow gentle motions (lobs, pitches, short slow roll casts) that are less likely to be detected.  On this particular run I was able to fish it with my body entirely hidden in the bushes with nothing but my head and my rod sticking out far enough to flip the fly in a 10 foot arc in all directions which is optimum.  

Sometimes you will poke your head out of the bushes to find a tailing fish, but more typically you will find fish ranging from slowly cruising to sitting still or holding in slight current.  You must be close because the carp are likely to be neutral.  You cannot afford a splashy presentation which requires the carp to move very far from the fly.  The presentation has to be prefect and you rarely have much more than a couple of feet of fly-line out.  As such your goal is to get get into a position to be able to present a fly that is absolutely as close to the carp without scaring them as you can achieve.  

Your presentation will almost always be a dead drop.  Sometimes a super heavy fly that forces the carp to commit and dive works best.  Sometimes a slowly sinking fly that triggers a vacuum take (where they open their mouth and flare their gills to suck the fly from a distance) works better.

 

Pros:

• You are much less dependent on finding carp in a great mood.  Because you are close your presentations are more suitable to coaxing or triggering a take.  
• Because you are less dependent on finding fish in a positive mood you are less likely to get skunked.    
• The takes are easy to detect and the hook-set is almost always a vertical trout set directly into the rubbery upper lip.  In my experience you land a higher percentage of the carp you hook because of this.  
• Nothing else in the fishing world is more like hunting.
• When you do get a take you often get an extremely good view of it and seeing the take in fine detail is addicting.

Cons:

• When you hook and land a fish you are hooking them in or close to the holding waters. It is rare to hook and land more than one fish from ambush
• You will almost always have access to carp.  You will not always know if they are on to you and you can waste significant time fishing to carp that know you are there but cannot be bothered to really be afraid of you.  Of course they can't be bothered to eat either.
• The carp you have access to will tend to be neutral at best.  This means that you may cast to many carp before you find the one willing to eat your fly.
• You almost never get to do a real fly cast and it turns out that casting is kind of fun.
• This form of fishing can feel like it lacks glitzy and glory.

This approach seems to have less variance (nerd term for more consistent).  I almost always catch some carp when I am sticking to this method but I rarely catch allot of carp.  Occasionally you want to catch allot of carp.

Both methods work, both methods should be in your arsenal.  I just need to balance them out a little better.

Denver Trout Unlimited Carp Panel

As a lead in to the Carp Slam DTU had a panel of experts give a session on fly fishing for carp at their monthly meeting this Tuesday.  Many fly-carpin experts have come by their knowledge slowly and painfully.  It is not always easy to share and honestly it isn’t always fair to even expect them to.  Given this natural reluctance the panelists did a great job and it was fun and I feel extremely lucky to live in an area with such a vibrant carpin community.  The panel was: 

• Michael Gracie (Blogger at michaelgracie.com, part time at Trouts fly shop)
• David Luna (2010 Carp Slam champ x 2, part time at Discount Fishing Tackle)
• Barry Reynolds (Author of “Carp On The Fly”, ROSS rep, )
• Tim Emery (From fishexplorer.com, radio and podcast personality)
• Will Rice (Contributing editor at Drake Magazine.)

I was too busy listening to take notes and too shy to whip out my camera and record so I can’t quote directly.  I can paraphrase some of the key themes from memory though.  Some of my own thoughts on these subjects are also included in red:

Coaxing Carp On The Drop

I have mentioned catching carp on the drop many times.  I am not sure I have adequately explained what I mean.

Catching huge fish on the strip is hard-on quality cool but it requires a special kind of carp with a certain level of aggression.  Carp with that level of aggression are really only common at certain times of year and in certain parts of the country.  On the other hand there is something about food dropping from the heavens that frequently triggers a strong and visible reaction, even with extremely passive carp. 

What is on the drop? 

The idea is pretty simple really and is hardly worth a long post.  You are aiming to get the fly above the dinner plate and let it drop straight to the bottom in the carp’s field of vision. 

That may be all anybody needs to know, but there are some subtle complexities in the drop presentation. 

Why does it work?:

Are carp really used to food dropping magically from the sky?  The average Musky hunter probably doesn’t really care why the figure 8 triggers a strike.  It just does, and that is pretty cool.  On the same level I barely care why carp find food drifting down from the heavens to be appealing.  What is important to me is that it works on passive carp.  Here in CO we have an abundance of passive carp and something on the order of ¾ of my happiness seems to come on the drop.

What to look for:

If the fish is going to take the fly there will usually be some indication before the fly hits the bottom.  You are looking for any changes in body posture or motion.  A furiously tailing fish that stops suddenly might be spooked, but it could also be leveling off to make a move on the fly.  Likewise when a slowly tailing fish starts tailing furiously it is very likely to be after your fly.  When a still or slowly cruising fish surges forward, well you get the picture.  In clear water you may see the mouth or gill-plates pulsate as the fish sucks in the fly.  All of these changes and many more indicate a take. 

 If the fly reaches the bottom without any visible reaction from the carp either it did not see it or was simply not interested.  You can try and ignite some passion with a twitch, strip or even by jigging the fly but often your best bet is to pull out and try another drop at a slightly different distance and/or orientation to the head.    

Getting in the Zone:

 How you get your fly into the drop varies based on the situation.  If the fish are very close you can simply extend the rod and lower the fly into place.  This is deadly even if it occasionally doesn’t feel like fly fishing.  When they are a little further out you can try a “lob drag and drop” style presentation where you lob-cast the fly past the carp and maneuver the fly into the zone at or near the top of the water column before letting it drop.  At extreme distances you may have to attempt to cast and strip the fly into the zone or even just aim for the magic distance where the fly landing does not scare the carp but they still see it drop. 

Speaking of the Zone: 

The size of the zone is a complicated subject of it’s own but there is no doubt that it often helps to have the fly drop a little to the side of the fishes head instead of directly in front.  I loved this great article "You gotta make em move" from Carp On The Fly which explains it better than I ever could.

Action during the Drop:

I have the most success with a dead drop.  By this I mean that I am not stripping or working the fly at all as the fly drops and the fly is dropping as vertical as possible.  Another option that can be extremely effective is to let the fly drop partially through the column and then just when it seems to have gotten attention give it some slow action with a strip or by lifting the rod.  Sometimes it spooks the carp.  Sometimes you get unlucky and actually pull the fly out of what would otherwise have been a take.  It is worth trying though, because occasionally a carp will react violently to the idea of a recently acquired target trying to escape.  These rare takes can be thunderous. 

On the rise:

A similar technique can result in a take I am thinking of as “on the rise”.  Although I have only gotten it to work about 10 times now, I have a method that occasionally works and has me very excited.  These few have started with a slowly cruising or mildly tailing fish coming directly at me.  I land fly past the carp and slowly drag it forward and a couple of inches to the side of the fish.  As the fly approaches the head I let the fly drop on a slow arc down and past the eye.  Just when the fish seems to have noticed the fly you drag the fly slowly forward just fast enough so that it planes back upward.  If you are really lucky the carp may rise up and grab the rising fly.  Coolest dang thing I have ever seen!    Maybe we will get lucky and Mr P will weigh in because he is reputed to have mastered this or something similar. 

Fly Design:

The drop plays heavily into what I think about when tying carp flies.

1)      Sink Rate.  Your fly can either plummet for the bottom or sink slowly down.  Different water conditions and fish behavior dictates different sink rates.  A high sink rate sometimes triggers extremely aggressive takes from otherwise passive carp when they try and get the fly before it hits bottom.  At other times it seems that a quickly sinking fly is too much work or does not give the carp enough time to acquire the target.

2)      Splash-Down:  Heavy and bulky flies hit the water harder. 

3)      Drop Attitude:  Your fly can either go into a dive bomb or sink relatively flat.  The placement of the weight is important but equally important is the placement of materials and how that affects the distribution of drag on the fly.  For example adding a tail has a tendency to drag that end of the fly up and give a little more of a dive-bomb attitude.   

4)      Flutter:   Some flies flutter and breathe as they drop (carp-stew, soft-hackles) while some (hairs ear nymph) are pretty action free. 

5)      Putting it all together:  The balance between drag, weight, sink rate, flutter and splash down gets complicated and fascinating.  More weight = faster sink but more splash.  More material = slower sink with more splash but more flutter.  Less material = faster sink with less splash but less action on the drop. 

Beating The “Dinner Plate Paradox” For Tailing Carp

The dinner plate paradox is the conflict of requirements to get a tailing carp to eat a fly.  First of all you have to get the fly on the bottom into the feeding zone or the “dinner plate”.  This zone can range from several inches to several feet around the carps head.  At the same time if you actually land your fly in that zone it frequently becomes the Ahh-Shit zone as the carp runs in terror.  To make matters worst the feeding zone and Ahh-Shit zone are often about the same size!