I live near a tributary of the Susquehanna. It has a real mix of fish; smallmouth, walleye, tiger muskies, panfish and lots of big carp. As you travel upstream to the tributaries of the tributary, the water cools some and eventually you get to trout water. As temps rise in the summer, the carp will move upstream and eventually you will sometimes find them in the same areas as trout.
One summer morning I went to my favorite stretch of trout water on this stream with the idea of catching a big brown. I like to fish streamers early in the morning and used to land nice browns pretty regularly. Two other gentleman had arrived at the same stretch of water and were fishing the hole upstream of me. I was fishing a Grey Ghost streamer. My method is to cast slightly upstream, mend once or twice to give the fly time to sink near the bottom then strip retrieve. When I got to the part of the hole where I expected a good trout to lie, I felt resistance on one of my first strips. At first I thought I had snagged the bottom, because my line wasn't moving but soon it came alive and I thought I had hooked the brown of a lifetime. After a few minutes, I figured that it wasn't a brown, it just didn't fight the same way. Carp like to stay in one spot if they can and resist being moved but then when they do they'll take a bunch of line all at once. Eventually I got a look at the fish and for sure it was a big river carp that had come up from the larger river. It gave me a long battle on my five weight and the guys upstream from me took notice and followed the action.
After a while, I landed the fish and decided to keep it. At the time, my wife was working with a Chinese guy who told me he loves eating them, so the fish was for him. I had to walk out next to the guys above me so I grabbed the carp by the tail and started carrying it out. The guys upstream had stopped fishing because they thought I had landed a true monster of a brown and were excited to see it. I got pretty close before they realized they had been fooled. I was a five minute fishing hero!
In all, I have landed three big carp on my old 5 wt. Each time I wondered if I would break the rod. Each was an incidental catch, the other times while targeting smallmouth also using streamers. A year ago I bought a 7wt and now use it for my smallmouth and carp fishing. We have had so much high water this year that the river has only been fishable for about 2 weeks. I have a couple of white wooly buggers in my fly box. Eventually the conditions will be right, and I'll see some carp working the bottom. I'll see if they will take a white bugger. It might be hard to catch one while actually targeting them.
