fly-fishing-for-carp | joepetrowflyfishing

Surprise, surprise, we have another post about carp. For those of you upset about it, not sorry. For those of you happy about it, I love you.

But for real and on a serious note, this past year was the definition of *elite* when it came to the carp fishing. Not only did the local waters fish excellent and produce some of our best fish to date, but I also had the opportunity to fish the famous canals around Scottsdale, Arizona and check out the carping scene there.

Let’s start with the Arizona carp. For starters, was there for a bachelor party weekend not focused on fishing, but still made it happen in less than desirable conditions. Best case fished for 2-hours each morning (early) as the hangovers were wearing off for the rest of the gentlemen and scholars at the AirbBNB. It was an unseasonably cold weekend in Arizona, but the fish did not seem to mind at all.

Not having fished in Arizona before, my best friend was Google Maps, and Uber’ing to a local park that had a handful of canals/ponds surrounding the premises proved to be the move . After about a 10-minute somewhat uncomfortable ride with the driver not understanding why I had a fishing rod with me, I entered a quiet residential park with practically no one else there. Literally upon exiting the vehicle and rigging up my 4-piece 6-weight rod, I was already seeing carp surface in the water around me. I also noticed some creek channels extending out of the ponds, to which I chose to explore those as the water was shallow and clear, and saw some fish moving. Within my first 10-minutes, I already was hooked up to a nice carp on one of my specialty home tie flies. Per usual carp fashion, the fish put up a great fight, and I was able to land a second fish shortly after in the same creek. The biggest fish of the morning came from one of the ponds themselves - a fish sunning in maybe 3-4 feet of water. Drag and dropped the fly right on its face, and bam. What a morning and one of the photos I was able to takee from it below:

As for the local carping this year, it continued to be one of my highlights for the summer. Although there were the recurring challenges with river conditions and clarity, when the water was clear and the sun was up, the fishing was unparalleled. Similar to last year, I found that late April and May produced the most fish (as they provided the largest schools I have ever seen – I’m talking 30+ fish in each school), but that fishing remained consistent until early September.

As always, the most effective way of catching these fish was on the micro skiff/stand up paddleboard, and exploring the backwater creeks off of the Chattahoochee river. One “newer” positive this year was that I caught more fish super shallow – i.e. less than a foot of water. Typically I am fishing for floating fish that are still over water that is 10+feet deep (which can be exceedingly challenging with the fly rod, as they can disappear upon desire), but now have some waters where it really is a true “flats” feel where wading is even possible if desired. One area I look forward to testing more in 2023 is trying to figure out the Grass Carp – there are a plethora in the river system that I fish, and although I’ve had some minimal luck, would be a ton of fun to figure out how to consistently hook into these fish. Have some plans to test out dry fly scenarios more with lighter tippet.

Was fortunate to have several outstanding sessions for the carp over the summer, and below you will find some of the best/highlighted fish we ran into. Overall, the favorite flies of the summer consisted of small damselfly nymphs, cottonseed patterns, as well as the occasional “wormy” looking thing when the conditions were right.