I let the friend lead. I warned Frank that the hole was treacherous. The
photo is taken down stream. The left side of the hole has a rock ledge
that sticks out in to the main hole. One bad step and it becomes 8 feet
quickly. The lower end of the hole is shallower and I have seen trout
sun themselves in there in the past.
Frank stopped and was
pointing at a fish in the shallows. He had sun glasses on. He said I
brought him to carp water. I grabbed his sun glasses and looked at the
the " big old carp" his words in the shallows sunning itself. Took off
the glasses and told Frank to hold still. I wanted to try to cast to the
"big old carp" before I could get in a cast I spooked it. Frank asked
me "Why were you dinking with that dumb old carp?" I told Frank: "Carp
don't have spots."
I was back there a couple times and could not
raise the monster. I assumed it was a night time feeder and a night time
attack was in order. The rock ledge and the big drop off put a damper
on my night time enthusiasm and I put it on the back burner.
Just
two weeks ago I was talking to a friend and he fished the hole and he
spooked a huge fish out of the shallows. This piqued my curiosity . It
has been raining non-stop since then and the water was too muddy and
high to fish. It finally went down and started to clear. I thought a
little bit of cloudy water would be good for a night time attack.
One of my friends from Chicago Dave Heyman told me about luck he had
been having with mice and told me how to fish mice and when. I went to a
local fly shop and got a couple Whitlock Mice. Dave told me to run the
edges of the banks. Slow steady retrieve with a pause and twitch from
time to time. The reason for working the edge was that this is where
wayward mice might fall in and the HUGE night time predators were out
hunting at night for this type of lost mouse.
I took my buddy Joe
with me and we worked both sides of the hole. I was standing on the
opposite side of the angler in the photo. Joe decided he was going to
work the rock ledge drop off. It was 4am this morning. We were both
casting. I could barely see Joe but I could hear him. The huge male hit
like a freight train. The splash and roll was very loud and it sent
shivers down the back of my neck. I didn't need to wait for him to
yell..."Come HELP!" like he usually does.
We both had the same
rig. A 8'6" 5/6 rod with a 2x leader on. I told Joe to calm down and let
the thing tire itself. The hole was deep and I reminded him a couple of
times when it made runs to give it side pressure so it would turn and
stay out of the underwater trees. I looked at my watch when the battle
started. It seemed like it took forever but the entire battle last 11
minutes.
