Carpin’

I hadn’t even read a blog until we started talking about it in the office (The Fly Shop Travel Department) a few weeks ago, but I’ve heard about them and liked the idea.  Even before I read my fist one, I had already signed up for this.  I like the idea of a sort of “off the cuff” approach to putting out there stories, thoughts, ideas, reports, memories, how to’s and anything else I can think of involving my fishing and fly tying activities and anything that comes up between trips.  That should just about cover anything I want to blog about (now, I’m even using the word as a verb).  Even though this is done through my work, it is a personal venue.  Not meant to sell fly fishing trips to world wide destinations (my normal job description at The Fly Shop – herein known as TFS) both to freshwater and saltwater.  Saltwater destinations are my specialty, but I get to several of our freshwater places each year.

Personally, I like fishing of all kinds.  If it swims, I enjoy developing flies to toss at it to see if I can get one or two fish to at least mouth one of the my new patterns or an old standby.  For whatever reason - food, curiosity, anger, habit, love, hate etc.   I’ve done a lot of trout fishing in my almost 6 decades of fishing, but given a choice, now, I would probably chase any one of a number of saltwater fishes, steelhead or carp.  I will write about my trips taken for TFS as well as my personal trips.  I will throw some new fly patterns out there.  I will pass on anything I think of interest pertaining to fly fishing or fly tying.

Here goes. 

A few weeks ago, my wife, Judy, and I took our vacation to Seattle, Wa, where most of our family still resides.  Both of our moms, my brothers and sister, our son and our grandkids.  We were there for our son’s wedding.  We all had a great time.  I mean a really great time.  We go to Seattle once or twice a year, but our time is mostly spent visiting relatives.  This time our son, Eric,  took us out to sample some of the city’s night spots and to meet some of his friends he works with at Seattle TattooEmporium.  Downtown Seattle has changed since we left in 1991.  It is vibrant, alive, I couldn’t believe the numbers of people (like us)  walking around Belltown, even at 2:00 AM.  Some of our highlights included the Can Can at the Seattle Market, The Lava Lounge where the DJ plays songs of my era (some great jazz and old rock and roll) and where the wedding was performed and the reception party was held at Slim’s Last Chance Saloon (maybe the best Bar-B-Q and stuffed Jalapeno anywhere).  My cousin, in town for the wedding and to visit her kids and grandkids, took us to Anthony’s restaurant in Ballard on the waterfront, where we witnessed one of those too-rare, perfect, Seattle sunsets over Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains.  The oysters I had for dinner were plentiful and delicious.  It was, maybe the most fun trip we,ve had to Seattle since we left, looking for more sunshine and blue skies.

Eric and our new daughter -in-law, Jaimie,  have a great, eclectic set of friends and workmates, a perfect sense of humor and love each other very much. 

Their wedding was the reason we went to Seattle.  While there, I was only three hours from some of the best carp fishing in the states.  Eastern Washington has several places where you can find sunshine, blue skies, skinny water and nose-down, tail-up carp feeding on the flats.  I called my longtime friend Darc Knobel to see if he wanted to chase fish, smoke a cigar and drink some beer.  He said he would love to chase fish and have a few beers but would pass on the cigar.  That’s perfect.  I’ll have his cigar. 

We met at 8:00 AM on the Columbia River.  The wind was idling down from an all-night blow, so that by the time we got out on the water, the white caps were gone and the surface was a perfect mirror reflection of the cloudless sky above.  Perfect, perfect, perfect.  We stopped at a shallow bar and got out in crystal clear, knee-deep water with a gravel bottom.  Every 50    yds or so we would see some mudding or tailing fish indicating feeding carp.  Flats fishing in every sense of the word.  We got several shots at them.  We hooked three large (10 – 12 pounds) fish casting to tailing and/or feeding fish.  One broke off, one came unpinned and one was landed.  Good morning!

After lunch, the fish were in deeper water in the weeds sort of logged up, some with their heads under a canopy of floating weeds.  Darc was poling and I was on the bow when a BIG fish was spotted doing just that.  There was a small hole in the weeds in front of its face (I couldn’t see it’s head, just the rear half of its body).  Darc is good at the pole and he put me within dapping distance of the the small hole without spooking the fish.  With a fairly big and heavy fly, I would swing and drop it until I got it through the hole and I watched the fish’s tail.  It twitched and moved a few inches forward and it’s body slightly turned.  He took it!  I set the hook! He towed us around – literally.  I would reel it closer; it would take line away and get enmeshed in the weeds.  We would get it untangled;   Repeat again.  We finally landed all 28.1 pounds (digital scale) of it. 

The pictures don’t look it, but it was the biggest carp either of us has witnessed being landed.  Darc got another fish in the 15 – 18 pound range. and we called it a day.  My idea of a good time.

There are a ton of things I can talk about here.  Flies, techniques, cigars, carp, how two grown men act like 12 year old boys when out on the water etc, but I will save that for another time.  I will recruit the assistance of my fellow office workers to help me figure out how to get pictures on this blog and then I will post it.  My first!