Rare Treat

The new pump arrived for the boat! I usually prefer to avoid the Sunday crowds but today I decided to go out and look for some fish anyway.

The conditions weren't great. The wind blew pretty hard and from time to time it would change directions. Nevertheless I found carp feeding along the shorelines who were hungry for my fly. I lost four or five good fish today which was disappointing, but I landed one that made up for it all:

Before I even hooked up I could see that this fish looked different. It had a dark spot on it's nose and when I got it into the net I saw brilliant orange along it's cheeks. This kind of color variation occurs naturally. Carp with these types of mutations were selectively bred to create the colorfully patterned carp we all know as koi.

However, this was only the first surprise of the day. Working my way along a sheltered bank, out of the wind, I came upon a wonderful scene:

The carp were busy sipping some kind of seed off of the surface! This type of surface feeding is uncommon for carp and it provides a rare opportunity to catch them on dry flies. All one needs to do is select a pattern that imitates whatever the fish are eating. I quickly found the tree whose seeds were blanketing the water:

Unfortunately, I am the type of person who goes fishing with a half dozen flies in my shirt pocket and so I found myself without an appropriate imitation. Nevertheless, I decided to try and jury-rig something, just for the heck of it.

I chopped off some yellow indicator yarn and tied it to a hook with a bit of monofilament. This was the result:

I fished with this ugly looking thing for about a half an hour. I actually got one fish to take it, but I didn't manage to set the hook.
I expect that the conditions won't change for a few days and so I am planning on tying some better "seed flies" and trying again later in the week.