Great last day with my buddy Scott. He did great and we finally caught one off the skiff on the last day this reservoir was open. Fish were tailing 2 weeks later but we were done. Now the snow is pounding the mountains and time to ski! But, I do have to fish Louisiana in a couple of weeks for huge Redfish so stay tuned.

Took my friend Scott out for the 4th time in Denver for some urban river carp fishing after he contacted me last year through my site. Long/short I think he was losing his faith in me after a few tries but in my defense, I used to have the whole river to myself and now yupsters are all over that shit and the fishing is definitely getting harder. And we had shitty conditions a lot of the time but excuses are like assholes, everyone has one right?!  Anyway, we finally caught some critter. Scott was the MAN, it was his spot for the day and he caught some nice ones finally! I thought he was going to think I was full of crap after getting skunked 3 times prior.

OK no more excuses. Well done Scott!

Fished the Keys for a few weeks with my buddy and fishing guide of 35 years, John Kipp . We finally got my skiff after a week and just in time for the wind. The prototype casting platform worked unbelievably well. I'm guessing we made 80% of our shots as opposed to maybe 10 to 20%? The wind was ripping 25 knots or better but the fish ate well. We went 18 for 24 and got DNA from 10. We are working with the state of FL to get DNA samples from fish to determine migratory patterns, mortality rates, growth rates and distribution of the fish. It's really cool but we have to fight the fish to the boat which is always tough but we do it regardless whenever possible to get the fly out of the fish's face. Some break off but we got the hooks out of most of them. A LOT of anglers just break them off when they get the leader which is a "tournament" release but beating them down is much harder. It was the coldest winter in decades so there was a lot more dissolved oxygen in the water so the fish were rolling less and fighting harder then I've ever seen in 20 years. Man were they tough to beat down! I was fighting a lot of fish for 45 minutes which is pretty rare for me but these fish averaged over 100Lbs and were just nasty this year.

I hooked the biggest tarpon in my life near the end of the trip. I saw a big fish coming down the bank and i told John, : i think there is a big shark coming down the bank and if it's not a shark, it's a huge fucking Tarpon. Holy shit, it's a huge fucking Tarpon!" So, I made the cast directly int a 25 knot wind and the fish ate and John got a couple shots of it jumping and we got off the stakeout pole and got the motor running and started to get back line. Everything was looking good when POW, catastrophic failure! John asked if I had a fly line and I said nope....

300 yards of 30# gel spun and my fly line gone! We looked at my backing and it was obvious that a fucking 'cuda had bitten through the line and that backing is SO hard to cut. John's never seen that happen in 35 years. Bummer....that fish was much closer to 200 than 150. Why that fish? Out of the thousands I've had eat the fly, the big one screws me like that! Oh well, we caught a bunch of 120-130 pounders so it's all good I guess!

We drove the boat back and I showed John why I wanted the skiff out here in the fist place. We churned and burned and hit WY/UT and caught some nice carp. The water was REALLY high which made it tough but it was all good. Waiting on John for pics so I can do a decent post.   The water in that whole drainage was WAY above average making it really tough to find skinny water as these reservoirs are steep cantons filled in with water for the most part. Still, no excuses, we caught some nice critter regardless and put the skiff through it's paces and it rocked!

Click here and then click on Islamorada 18 Out West gallery for some cool pics from the skiff's first trip carp fishing as well as my good buddy John's first time out as well. Check out his photos on the site above!

The carpboy.com site is under construction, but I hope to keep you updated via this blog.  Kick ass video and more shit to come unless the oil catastrophe makes me kill myself.  Hoping to have a positive update from the Keys on July 3, 2010.  Last tarpon season ever??

Cheers,
Carpboy

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