www.natgreeneflyfishers.org Email: info@natgreeneflyfishers.org

Nat Greene Flyfishers February 2011

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NAT GREENE CALENDAR

MEETINGS & EVENTS

February 8, 2011 - Speaker: Christian Fichtel, contract fly tyer, professional fishing guide, and UNCG pre-med student will show us how to fish the Davidson River pool by pool. Intimate knowledge of a place is a hard won asset, accumulated over years of wading the same water. With Christian's help, you will be able to add another great river to your repertoire.

All are welcome. Leonard Recreation Center, 6324 Ballinger Road, Greensboro, NC 27410, 7:00 p.m. map and directions

March 5, 2011 - Annual Spring Banquet and Seminar, with Special Guest Speakers Ian & Charity Rutter; Afternoon Seminar, 9:00am - 2:00pm, "Catch More Fish: Fly Fish Like a Predator." Evening Banquet, 6:00pm - 10:30pm, "Great Smoky Mountains National Park - A Wild Trout Paradise.” Heritage Hill Banquet Facility located at 5435 N. Church St. in Greensboro NC (directions). Please see the banquet page for more details. All are welcome.

March 8, 2011 - Speaker: Jim Brady, PhD scientist, fly tyer, and legendary raconteur, will bring his data driven approach to shad and striped bass fly fishing on the Roanoke River. In Jim's world, he does only what works with no fuss and no muss. Not all parts of the Roanoke are created equal. Using the Google Maps satellite images, Jim will reveal the secrets of the Roanoke honey holes, why they hold fish and how to make an effective presentation with the right fly. If you have never experienced catching 50 fish in four hours, Jim will show you how. This year could be your year on the Roanoke.

All are welcome. Leonard Recreation Center, 6324 Ballinger Road, Greensboro, NC 27410, 7:00 p.m. map and directions

April 12, 2011 - Speaker: Scott Cunningham of Wilson Creek Outfitters will show why river smallmouth bass can be so exciting. Most people think trout when they think of flyfishing, until they hook into a hard fighting river smallmouth bass. Scott will show us how to wade and float these bigger rivers. Self bailing rafts offer the ultimate float; nice high swivel seat which allows you to "sight fish", larger water coverage, and access to remote river stretches. Scott will also explain why overnight floats are so much fun. Float fish 4-5 miles, stop for the evening, relax while your guide sets up camp, sit around the campfire and talk about the day's highlights while your guide prepares dinner. In the morning, after a light breakfast head back out on to the river for a second day of fishing.

All are welcome. Leonard Recreation Center, 6324 Ballinger Road, Greensboro, NC 27410, 7:00 p.m. map and directions

Membership: Everyone accepted Dues: None! Door Prizes at every meeting!

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NCTU RIVERCOURSE 2011

NCTU’s 2011 Rivercourse Conservation and Fly Fishing Youth Camp will be held June 19 thru 24 at Lake Logan Conference Center. Each year we contact chapters in North and South Carolina in the hope that each will provide at least one camper and will help fund the camp with a chapter donation. Some chapters also sponsor a specific activity at camp or conduct chapter-matched member-donation campaigns. Whatever the source, chapter-sourced donations are the lifeblood of Rivercourse.

Each year ten of sixteen camper slots are reserved for chapter nominations in order to give priority to campers chosen by TU members. The time to accept non-TU campers in fast approaching.

If you are a member of Nat Greene Fly Fishers and know of a boy or girl, aged 13 – 15, who you would like to nominate to participate in this program, please contact any member of Nat Greene listed below and make your nominations as soon as possible.

Linda Byington
Administrative Director
NCTU Rivercourse

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Virginia DGIF Proposed License Fee Increase

I need your help to turn around something that effects all of you, non-residents and residents alike, if you hunt or fish in Virginia or are counting on tourism money from hunters, fishermen and others who play in the outdoors. I'm asking you to click on the below link and make your views known. If you have a contact with a newspaper, radio station or political figure you should make them aware of this as well.

I am normally a fan of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and have gone out of my way to support them, especially in all things relevant to the Smith River, but now I have to give them a big JEER!

I was on the DGIF home page and saw the link to "Proposed Regulation Amendments Pertaining to License Fees and Certain Other Fees ",. http://www.dgif.virginia.gov/regulations/comment-funding/proposed-language/4VAC15-20-65.pdf Once I clicked on the link and read the proposal it hit me right between the eyes and vibrated all the way down to my wallet.

All I can say is, WOW! Are they out of their cotton picking minds. I can understand and tolerate the incremental $5 increases they started a few years ago but what they are proposing now will drive just about every non-resident sportsmen elsewhere. I currently spend $286 to hunt and fish in Virginia. (Basic fish, Trout, Basic hunt, Big Game, Muzzleloader, Crossbow) Their proposal will increase that to $580, which is much more then I am willing to pay. I may be stuck with it for a short time because I own a "get-away" place in Henry County, but I can assure you that if I were looking for that same place today, such excessive license fees would be a deal breaker.

You probably also know that a great deal of Virginia's trout water is visited by non-resident fishermen who already spend $72 for that privilege. Folks who come for short periods currently purchase a $15 temporary license. This will increase to $65. If they want to fish in stocked waters add another $85. These visitors also drop a lot of tourism money in the towns adjacent to the trout steams. In a small way my success as a guide on the Smith River, where I annually placed an average of forty "heads on beds" in local motels, eateries, gas stations, etc, opened the eyes of regional thinkers to the great potential in their backyard. The Martinsville / Henry County area is just now gearing up to benefit from eco-tourism tied to the river. The Waynesboro Fly Fishing Festival and other regional events are doing the same thing in their respective areas. These astronomical increases in fees will "Kill the Golden Goose" and communities that are just beginning to realize the benefits of fishing and hunting tourism will suffer.

DGIF should rethink this proposal. License sales are already down. $65 temporary and $170 annual fishing licenses and $410 or more hunting licenses will cause non-resident sales to plummet. Reasonable increases are acceptable - Gouging is not! What you get with gouging is a ticked off public and less sales because you have reached the tipping point where it is no longer worth it.

Al Kittredge
611 Dandridge Dr
Fayetteville, NC 28303

Tele 910-868-6235

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Fly Fishing for Cyprinus Carpio

Prior to early October 2010, I had never caught a cyprinus carpio on a fly rod. Oh, I had made numerous casts at them and had actually hooked one. But, until this trip with Captain Paul Rose I had never landed one.

In the summer of 1998 I experienced my first actual fly fishing encounter with a cyprinus carpio. There was a very fast and abrupt ending to that first brief encounter with a fish that I estimate weighed more than 20 pounds. On that hot July day I was wading and fishing South Fork Creek (Davidson County, NC) for bluegills with a 4-weight rod and a #8 wet black ant on 4x tippet when I saw this huge green, brown and orange fish slowly swimming toward me. It was stirring up a plume of mud as it fed on a shallow 10-inch deep mud-bar 30 feet downstream from me. I made a very lucky perfect cast to within 6-inches of the front of the beast. This fish slowly swam over and inspected my fly before if opened its orange sucker lips and sucked it in. When I lifted the rod to set the hook (by the way, this is the wrong way to set the hook) all “hades” broke loose. The huge cyprinus carpio made a powerful fast turn and then tore off downstream. I was helpless and startled as mud, moss and water went flying into the air and my fly rod bent all the way into the handle. It was a blur of mere seconds as first the fly line and then the backing melted off of my screaming fly reel. The line weaved in and out of downed root wads and trees before it simply went limp. I stood in awe of a creature that could be so powerful and fast. The whole episode had lasted less than ten seconds. The fish was gone and I would spend the next few minutes regaining my composure, letting my quivering hands quit shaking and unweaving my fly line from the root wads.

That was the first and only time I had ever hooked a cyprinus carpio, (i.e. the common carp), on a fly until Captain Paul Rose (www.carolinabonefishing.com) invited me on a carp fly fishing trip. When we met in June at the Federation of Fly Fishers Southeastern Council Conclave we talked about a carp fishing trip together. Paul is incredibly enthusiastic about fly fishing for carp and his enthusiasm is contagious. Paul picked an open October Saturday date and invited me to fish Moss Lake (near Gastonia) with him. That Saturday morning I made the two hour drive from Lexington to Moss Lake Park and found myself about 45 minutes ahead of our scheduled 8:30AM meeting time. Mapquest had mistakenly told me that the drive was 2.5 hours. While waiting for Paul at the boat ramp parking lot I got the opportunity to make my best cast and land my biggest catch of the year.

I was sitting in the warmth of my car listening to the radio when a gentleman started backing his truck, 16-foot aluminum bass boat and trailer down the boat ramp. He expertly backed the trailer into the water. His boat easily slid off of the trailer and into the lake. It was at that moment, with the boat free-floating away from trailer and into the lake, that he discovered he had not properly secured his bow line. His boat was floating away from the dock with the bow line drifting un-tethered behind. He quickly parked his truck and trailer, ran back to the ramp and started to undress on the dock. He was going to make a cold swim to retrieve his boat.

I looked at the electronic temperature display on my dashboard and it read a chilly 42°F. I quickly jumped out of the car and strung up my 7-weight fly rod. To the 8-lb test tippet I tied on a Lefty’s Hair Deceiver with a trailing treble hook. I had designed this pattern to fly fish for gar. The gentleman (I later learned his name was Jim) had already stripped off his shirt and was taking off his shoes when I ran down to the dock with my fly rod. I yelled to Jim that “you do not need to jump into the lake. I can catch your boat from here with my fly rod”. Jim took one look at my fly rod and another look at his boat that was now floating about 80 feet from the end of the dock. Jim sighed and stated, “please try, but I don’t think you will be able to reach it with a fly rod.” I quickly stripped off most of my fly line onto the dock. I worked out fly line with false cast and then sent a long cast toward the boat. The fly landed in the water right in front of the bow of the boat and over the top of the trailing tow rope. I was feeling proud of my cast. I stripped the fly in and sure enough the trailing treble hook snagged in the tow rope. Using even pressure I slowly reeled the boat back to the dock. Jim shook my hand and thanked me for retrieving his boat and saving him from a cold swim. I had started the morning with a really good cast. However, accurately casting at carp for the rest of the day would prove to be much more challenging … and humbling.

Paul met me at 8:30AM and we were soon motoring out onto the lake in his flats boat. Paul explained that the strategy was to slowly cruise with the push pole or trolling motor about fifty feet from the shoreline and look for feeding (mudding) carp on clear mud-flats in shallow water. This would be a 100% sight fishing game. When we spotted a feeding carp it would be my job to cast a lightly weighed fly to within a foot in front of the carp’s head and into its feeding path. He enthusiastically told me that we would get twenty to thirty decent shots at carp and if we were lucky we would get eight to ten takes. He made it sound easy, but in reality for several reasons it was difficult. For me this turned out to be one my most challenging and rewarding fly fishing adventures.

Paul polled us into a shallow cove with water about 2 feet deep. He spotted the first carp which he calmly pointed toward. My “fish vision” was not yet adjusted so try as I might I could not see the fish. Finally Paul advised me to point and slowly sweep my fly rod clockwise. Paul would instruct me where to stop in the direction of the carp. Closely following Paul’s instructions I pointed, swept the rod until Paul said “stop”. Finally I saw the plainly visible mudding carp and felt really silly for not seeing it earlier. Then I made a common, according to Paul, casting mistake. During my first cast I shot the line too far, lining the carp and sending it fleeing off of the flat. If that wasn’t enough, the panicked carp spooked three other carp which blasted off of the flat leaving a huge mud trail and ruining that cove for the first stop. One blown cast and four potential targets all gone in mere seconds. Paul just smiled and said “that is the nature of carpin.”

Along another shallow flat I would get and blow a second chance. Paul spotted a small carp mudding alone out from under an old floating dock. I made a good cast and the carp responded by slowly swimming over and sucking in the fly. I did not see or feel the take until it was too late and the carp had expelled the fly from its mouth. Paul just calmly stated, “that was a good cast. That is carpin.”

During the morning I had several more decent shots at mudding carp. These carp either ignored the fly, followed the fly without ever taking it or would spook and blast off the flat leaving a mud trail as evidence of their rapid exit. Once I had a really good shot at a big carp that was actively feeding underneath an overhanging tree. However, when the fly landed and started sinking, several juvenile bluegills swam over and started pecking the silicon rubber legs of the fly. Paul explained that that was just a bad break. He said that when bluegills start pecking on the fly the carp sense something is amiss and typically will not take the fly.

At 12;30PM we took a break to eat some sandwiches and talk about “carpin”, Paul’s description of fly fishing for carp. Paul explained that “typically only about one out of every four carp cast to will actually take an interest in the fly, even if the fly is properly presented. Of those that take interest, about half of them will actually take the fly. So the odds of hooking a carp on a fly are about one in eight fish you sight cast too. Some days when the carp are really on the feed the hookup ratio is much higher. However, typically the one hookup to eight carp cast to is standard. A really accurate caster can increase their odds dramatically by consistently casting the fly into the carp’s feeding window which is within a foot of the carp’s nose.

I had to leave at 3:00PM for a dinner with my wife and friends. Fishing time was running out on me and I was feeling a little anxious. I wanted to catch a carp more for Paul than for myself. He had set me up on several nice targets and I had either blown the cast, blown the hook-set or the carp did not take the fly. Paul motored us up the lake to another cove with a long seawall and a sand bottom back cove with some downed trees lying in the water. The water was only a foot deep in this cove and Paul poled us slowly along with the sun on my back shoulder. This time I spotted the small carp at the same time that Paul whispered, “there he is at 3 oclock.” I cast my “Crazy Charlie” carp fly to within ten inches of the mudding fish. The carp moved toward the fly and hovered above it almost motionless. Paul instructed me to twitch the fly very gently. When I made a very light twitch I saw the carp “hoover” up the fly. I set the hook and the was tight to my first carp of the trip. It was only a 14-inch fish and I landed it within a minute. The skunk was off and I had landed my very first carp on a fly, albeit a small one. We quickly unhooked and released the fish and Paul said, “congratulations. Let’s look for a bigger one.”

As Paul poled the skiff down the shallow shore line we came to a mud flat with some overhanging trees and very skinny water. There was a downed log lying at a forty-five degree angle from the bank. Lying next to the downed were three large carp actively mudding in the shadow of the log. This time I made the perfect cast. The carp at the head of the group swam swiftly over and swiftly sucked up the fly. I made a strip strike and felt the heavy throbbing weight of a big fish. At first the carp just ran parallel to the shore line. I could see and feel it shake its head back and forth. Then the carp changed directions and made a strong determined head shaking run out the mouth of the cove into the main lake. The reel spool was spinning backward and the drag was purring in protest. The carp took all of my fly line and approximately forty feet of backing before I was able to turn it with steady side pressure. I worked the fish toward the boat when it turned and powered off again, this time not getting into the backing. Several times I pressured the fish closer to the boat. Then the carp would turn and make a shorter bull-dogging run. The tussle with this fish reminded me a lot of fighting a red drum in the saltwater marshes. Finally I turned the fish and brought it to the boat. Paul dipped the landing net into the water and lifted seven pounds of beautiful brown, orange and green carp out of the water. We slapped high fives, took some photos, revived and released the carp to delight some other lucky fly angler.

I have never worked harder or been prouder of any fish I have caught on a fly rod. With my first big carp finally landed we called it quits so I could make my dinner appointment.

What I learned from the experience:

Carp are a very strong, challenging, skittish and worthy fish to target with a fly rod. They deserve a lot more respect from the fly fishing community. I know they are an invasive species, but they are here to stay so let’s enjoy them. I can’t wait to try it again this summer.
Fly fishing for carp is an excellent way to practice for site fishing in saltwater especially for species like red fish or bonefish.
Going the first time with an excellent guide like Paul Rose (www.carolinabonefishing.com) will help shorten the learning curve significantly and will also be a lot of fun.
Site fishing in shallow water is the rule for the fly fisherman chasing carp. Very stealthy and quiet approaches are needed to target this species with a fly rod.
Casting precision is paramount to success. According to Paul the type and color of fly isn’t nearly as critical as making a precise cast. Cast the fly and let it sink to the bottom within one-foot of the nose of the carp for best results.
The fly that worked for me was a size 6 brown over orange craft fur “Crazy Charlie” bonefish type fly with a few strands of silicon rubber legs. Paul says that other flies can be effective such as wooly buggers, crayfish patterns, leech patterns and rubber legged nymphs in olive, black and brown. Sizes 4-8 seem to be the best producers.
I used a seven-weight rod with a large arbor reel and did not feel over-gunned. An eight-weight would not be too much rod especially for bigger carp.
I used 12-feet of leader with the tippet being 3-feet of eight-pound test fluorocarbon.
Paul says that late spring through early fall are the best times to target carp.
A mudding or actively feeding carp is the best one to cast too. You can cast to a suspended or fast moving carp, but the odds are that that fish will not take any interest in the fly.

Paul Rose will be giving an audio-visual presentation on fly fishing for carp at our 2011 FFF-Southeastern Fly Fishing Festival on Saturday morning, June 4th. I hope that you will take the opportunity to see Paul’s presentation and learn to enjoy fly fishing for carp. I know I certainly enjoyed my trip with Paul and I learned a lot; a lot of humility, a satisfying sense of accomplishment and the enjoyment of sharing a day on the water with a good friend

God Bless and Tight Lines
Anthony Hipps, President Southeastern Council Federation of Fly Fishers

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NAT GREENE FLYFISHERS CLUB OFFICERS

President

Charles Tuttle

(336) 286-3649

tuttlecw@triad.rr.com

Vice-President

Jeff Wayman (VP)

Wayview@triad.rr.com

Treasurer

Neal Mitchell