When it comes to fly fishing, I’ve traditionally been a resident trout only type of guy. If I wasn’t able to fish for trout, I generally wouldn’t fish at all. Although this might sound foolish, my reasoning was as follows:
- Steelhead and salmon fishing in any river within an hour drive in any direction of my house is generally a shoulder to shoulder meatfest. Not my idea of fun, at all.
- Warm water fishing with a fly rod has often seemed impractical, or inaccessible, due to the difficulty getting into a river or lake without some sort of boat (most are not wadeable and/or have zero room for back casting).
Well, I’m happy to say that I’m a reformed warm water fly fishing enthusiast. This happened gradually over the past couple of years. The main triggers included a new float tube which made a bunch of new water accessible, as well as discovering a couple nice wadeable stretches of rivers I didn’t previously know existed. Of course, the hot weather this summer helped push me over the edge a bit too.
First Carp on a Fly Rod
The net result was lots of fun warm water fishing this year. In fact, I caught three species for the very first time on a fly rod this year: smallmouth bass, pike and carp. Previous years had me dabbling with largemouth bass and panfish.
One of many smallmouth bass taken on the fly this summer.
Next year I’m planning to add a pontoon boat to my ever-growing inventory, so hopefully that will make things even more interesting!