Knowing I hadn”t done much fly fishing this year, professor Dave called me and said that he had something that I had to try, he said the cicadas were falling off the trees and that I had to see the carp cruising the banks slurping them down. He told me to bring some stout leader material, a box of bass poppers and some nymphs to trail them with, guaranteed that I was in for a treat. He wasn”t lying, I arrived and it didn”t take long before we had a dozen or so 4 and 5 lbers in the Troutsmacker, my boat. It really didn”t matter what you were fishing, as long as you were fishing a popper with a dropper, and as long as you had a 8 lb or better leader. I learned quickly that 6 lb tippet wasn”t going to stop one of these Ky bones from running into the timber, after I lost three or so, I went straight up to 10 lb leader material and tied my popper on from there. Red and orange poppers worked the best, a regular old sneaky pete was fine, followed by a weighted, tan hare”s ear, nothing fancy about it. Precise casting helped as carp are skittish, but if you put it in their faces without disturbing the surface, you were almost guaranteed a hookup. After four or five hours, I could hardly believe the number of carp we ended up boating – that day and for the next few weeks. Though not giant carp, more a numbers game, as my good buddy Josh Lillard, pictured above said, “Sight fishing, stalking, fishing dry flies, this is great! Too bad the carp fishing is only this good every 17 years.” You can bet that we are waiting in anticipation for the next cicada hatch – too bad it”s only once every 17 years. Visit us at Woods and Water
