Metzger's Marsh and Carp on the Fly

Good grief! The days are flying by! Despite my busy schedule, I *somehow* manage to fit in fly fishing. I'm kidding. I really replace my school work with fishing trips which I shouldn't do but I do! So, June 15, was one of those days.

My cousin came in to town because his girlfriend was doing a triathlon at Maumee Bay State Park on the 16th. So, my Dad, cousin, and I went to Metzger's Marsh to fish for carp. I thought it would be a good chance to show everyone the ropes about how to catch some golden bone! Of course things go a lot better in your head than they do in real time. First, there was a major delay in getting out to the swamp in the first place, I had very little sleep as I was tying about 40 flies for the swamp trip alone, and I was on call the previous night for work so it made life very interesting. In the end, everything went swimmingly up to the point where we were out on the water....

So, the first problem, which actually made things fun, was the mayflies. Mayfly season is right now and every mayfly and its mother are out. So, mayflies are everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of them are flying about, sticking to foliage and to us as we walk through the tall swamp grass.

Below is a short video of mayflies stuck to my body and backpack. It was nuts.

So, fast forwarding to the point where my everyone was out on the water, we all stalked carp for around 2 hours and I was the only one who caught a carp on the fly. It wasn't very big but at least it was something. I saw plenty of carp. We all did. The problem was, as I found out, we all were using too heavy of flies so they didn't sit on top of the muck which is what the carp wanted. I switched to my own variation of a Barry's Carp Bitter in olive which landed the one and only carp of the day.

What a nice fish to break in my Redington CPX 8wt.

Love this shot!

Overall, it didn't matter that we didn't catch more fish. We all had a nice time, it was beautiful outside, and no one was hurt. Life was good. Below is a short video of an okay release of the carp I caught.

My Dad left around noon and my cousin and I decided to stay for a little longer. We ended up stepping on carp and even netting some. It was pretty funny as the carp were just laying in the weeds or mud and sleeping and we'd put a fly up to their noses and they wouldn't move and then we'd net them but they always escaped before we could take any pictures. : )