On the morning of June 25th, my friend and guide Luke Annear swung by in his truck with his Towee in tow. When Luke isn’t pursuing his third post-graduate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, you can usually find him chasing carp on the rivers of southern Wisconsin. Luke’s guide service, Freshwater Flats, specializes in site fishing opportunities for carp. But that day, we were trying something a little bit different.
This summer, the Bighorn River Alliance is celebrating the thirty sixth year of its Carp Tourney, the oldest of its kind in the country. But the title for longest running non-competitive carp flyfishing event may belong to Nebraska’s Cornhuskers Fly Fishers and their annual CarpFest. Since the club’s founding in the 1970s, anglers have gotten together on what always turned out to be the summer’s hottest day to throw flies at carp and dip battered bottom feeders into a vat of boiling oil. In Omaha, carp are regarded as a delicacy and are regularly available at Friday night fish fries. But as former club president Larry Dostal remembers it, “The carp fishing was usually an afterthought.” So much so that when Dostal got involved in the 2010s, no one could remember anyone having actually caught a carp at CarpFest.
Flyfishing for carp holds about as much appeal for me as getting a face tattoo. But what if my ancestors—or yours—were doing just that at the dawn of civilization? University of Connecticut anthropology professor Natalie Munro hypothesizes that this may indeed have been the case among the prehistoric people who regularly visited an ancient lake in what is today northern Israel.
Carp KoanA lesson in patience, persistence, and heartache By Michael Garrigan Photo by Jeremie Hollman Devoted to the untraceable path, carp are muddy enigmas that speak an ambiguous language. Wanderers of sunken trees along river islands, their routes are tied into knots, impossible to untangle. One can only hope, with carp. One can only seek.…
Sowbellies and baseball in the Cornhusker State Dawn comes early to southern Nebraska on the 16th of June. Nautical twilight, second of the earth’s three twilight phases, begins before 5 a.m. in Kearney, a town of some 30,000 sitting just off I-80 about three hours west of Omaha. I stopped in Kearney last summer on…
Statuary in the Southern Imagination “What do we do with hundreds of Confederate monuments and related statuary across the United States? Americans face a challenge that might be called the mass curation of our public spaces, in light of contemporary sensibilities, yes, but just as important, in service of what has always been the truth.”…
Craft beer and flyfishing go together like Jell-O shots and bachelorette parties. In the fishier towns in America you’ll find angling-themed beers of every taste and style, from Trout Slayer Wheat Ale (Big Sky Brewing, Missoula, MT) to Cutthroat Porter (Odell Brewing, Fort Collins, CO) to Steelhead Extra Pale Ale (Mad River Brewing, Humboldt County,…
Instead of dick pics, I send my girlfriend pictures of myself, naked, holding fish over my junk. Sometimes they’re full-body shots. Other times they’re close ups of just the fish covering my frank and beans, with a halo of manicured pubic hair surrounding it. #hottie #instawizard.
GLASS AND RUSTED METAL on the beach. The deafening sound of planes landing. And a steady striped-bass bite. The mussel beds and grungy shores of Boston Harbor may not be pristine, but they reliably produce fish—stripers, bluefish, carp, even the rare bluefin. When I tell people I fish here, they scoff, laugh, or plain don’t…
Scoring a paycheck to fish incessantly seems like a savvy career move—if you can find the right mix of employer (preferably a company churning out badass gear) and locale (somewhere near steelhead, or poon flats, smallies ponds, tidal redfish… a carp ditch). Insatiable flyfisher Russell Miller began the process in Boulder, CO, in the late…
The flashing freeway sign reminded us that high winds had closed I-25 to light and/or high-profile vehicles. This wasn’t a problem for Clyde. Ford built him in 1974 weighing just under 5,000 pounds. Its big-block 460 engine alone weighs more than 700. We weren’t getting blown anywhere. Instead, we were comfortably cruising north riding low…
When Malheur Wildlife Refuge militants in January made the decidedly un-Boy Scout move of announcing their lack of long-range plans by calling for snacks, perhaps they didn’t recognize the plethora of protein swimming just out their adopted back door: a millions-strong armada of carp, so many that their protruding backs can give off the illusion…
Montana’s Missouri River is beloved for its prolific insect hatches, ready-made drift-boat water, and thousands of trout per mile. But for Brian Kimmel and Adipose Boatworks’ founder Tracy Allen, the flyfishing flip-side—shallow-water carp “hoovering” bugs in the froth—is equally addictive. Via Todd Moen, at T-Motion Theater.
ATLANTA, YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND, is not a particularly good fishing town. We have a striped bass run, as well as some nearby mountain fisheries for brook trout, but on the whole, it’s tough being a flyfisher in the Dirty South. When I moved to the city a decade ago, I took a stab at…
I wasn’t too concerned about the highway patrolman until I had to start digging under the seats for a piece of sharpened rebar. Then I thought I might go to jail. We were somewhere between Boise and Island Park, trying to get to Bozeman.
It’s 2011, the economy’s in the toilet, and businesses are folding at an alarming rate. So what did Allen Gillespie and Jeremy Nelson do? They opened a fly shop. Foolish? A guaranteed loser? Others may have thought so, but these guys dove in, opening 3 Rivers Angler that fall. They wanted to alter the flyfishing…
Today’s fly shop is evolving. No longer is it merely a place to stumble in, drop 10 bucks on bugs, exit toward river, and repeat six months later. There’s more to the equation. Successful shops are community builders. Gathering places for the like-minded. Hubs of activity offering wisdoms extending beyond the sale rack.
Bay Area fly shops have taken a hit and many hanger-ons have slid off the cliff in recent times. In 2006, after witnessing a flurry of shops fold, current California Fly Shop owners Xavier and Karen Carbonnet made the brazen move to embrace the industry and acquire one.
I thought I was just sharing a lark—fine: I was bragging—when I posted a Facebook update a month after moving from Missoula, Montana, to Oberlin, Ohio: “Just caught a dozen bluegill on a fly rod in a light rain standing on the shore of Oberlin Reservoir. I think I’d forgot how much fun fishing could…
At 37 feet long, 9,000 pounds, and three miles to the gallon, Clyde didn’t fit well in Berkeley, literally or figuratively. I passed an electric car with a bumper sticker that said, “Animals are just little people in fur coats,” and eased on toward the Sac.
The Fishermen’s Spot has been serving the Southern California region for more than 40 years. Tenacity, exceptional customer service, and deft product know-how all play into such impressive longevity. But never discount dumb luck, stubbornness, and an unwillingness to face reality, says shop co-owner Ken Lindsay.
After eighteen hours of travel I arrive on the shaky, sweaty downside of an extended coffee and doughnut binge. I love travel, the lure of the exotic, broadening your perspective. But sometimes, instead of a welcome transportation to an easy, distant place, where you step off the plane and a bronzed beauty places a lei…
There are two types of fly shops out there, destination and local. Oak Orchard Fly Shop defiantly falls into the latter category. Of course this was not always the case.
We all know what a proper flyshop is supposed to look like. You park where a gas station burned down in the Sixties, walk by a nice place to get a drink, cross over the rickety old porch and then flap through the screen door, stepping into a converted general store built before the crops…
In a town crazy for baseball, there are at least a few people in St. Louis, Missouri, that regard the Cardinals as mere amusement—something to occupy their time while driving to some of the most underrated flyfishing streams in the Lower 48. Many of those drives start at T. Hargrove Fly Fishing, tucked off Interstate…