Floodwater Carp

Carp love rising water. Newly flooded areas provide the golden ghost with food, safety and space. When the deluge of rain arrives, carp tend to follow the rising waterline and feed heavily, even in the middle of winter. During wet winters, I see carp during January tailing in inches of water regardless of the water temperature, gorging themselves on the newly available food.

A beauty landed in a newly flooded brush forest

Now during spring, not only do the carp utilize the shallows to feed, but I’ve been a witness to the earliest start to the spawning season I’ve ever seen. Not only the earliest start, but the longest running spawn I’ve witnessed at this intensity. Hundreds, if not thousands, of carp have been loading into the shallows since mid-February, moving through the flooded brush in massive parties reminiscent of the ‘60s and ‘70s Hollywood orgy parties you only heard about but wished you participated in. With the number of fish in the shallows, I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them are spawning multiple times, using their newfound freedom with all this extra water to do their thing. Spawning carp don’t quietly make a bed or a redd like a bass or trout—they move around in big groups, usually one or two females at the front with about 20 smaller males rushing in behind them and knocking into the females to knock their eggs loose and fertilize them. Since carp spawn this way, they avoid trapping ethically questionable fishermen in a situation where they are easy to catch while spawning. Spawning carp won’t look at anything you throw at them—they’re too busy having fun spreading their genes, and it can be quite a good time to just leave them to it and enjoy watching the ongoing proceedings.

Catching non-spawning carp during these events is often difficult for people just starting to chase these majestic golden beauties. It’s easy to get caught up in following groups of the loudest and most obvious carp, instead of peeling away to find the fish that are feeding on the edges, which yields in catching the most by volume. Spawning carp make a lot of commotion when engaging in their R-rated behavior, and thus, root up a ton of mud and all the things living in that mud. Worms, leeches, damselfly nymphs, and scuds are all thrown around while big groups of love-eyed carp move around. The carp that are hungry, either from fattening up before the spawn or munching down on food to recharge after spawning, are feeding on all the extra food being thrown around. Often blindly so, some of the least spooky and most aggressive carp you’ll ever encounter are feeding heavily during these moments. To find these hungry, golden-scaled, mustachio-ed wonder fish, break away from the commotion of the love-seeking spawners—and look for fish rooting around in the mud clouds following them. Often, while just watching groups of carp moving around spawning, you’ll see a pattern of the first 20-50 fish following the spawn group not being interested in feeding. But after that, you’ll see a handful of solo fish or smaller groups of fish rooting around and moving much more slowly than the spawners. Those are the fish you want. Once you’ve dialed in on the pattern, you can bounce around and find a lot of feeding fish doing this, and can rack up some awesome number of carp throughout the day. It’s possible for one angler to have forty to sixty fish days during these events. 

Picking out non-spawning carp hanging around spawning groups

And then one day you show up, and there aren’t any massive groups of love-blind fish moving around, and all of a sudden it’s all changed again. I should mention that the spawn isn’t a blanket time period from start to finish—some days they are spawning like wild, and then there’s a lot of days between where you won’t run into a single spawner. Each lake will be slightly different, and in some lakes the spawn is over and done within a week, while others will have longer windows. That is just one of the awesome things about chasing carp on the fly—every day can be completely different in such a wild way, and the changing water levels this season seem to be exacerbating just that. Generally, you’ll have another window of amazing fishing following the spawn, where the fish that haven’t been feeding during the time they’ve been love-making are bulking back up. This is another great time to catch massive numbers of carp—flats where they were spawning get loaded up with happily tailing fish, and the deeper river channels are loaded with surface-feeding fish in the mornings and evenings. 

In lakes that are still rising slowly, every time you’re out you should be paying attention to low-lying areas that may get flooded in the coming weeks. Lately I’ve been seeing areas where wildflowers were starting to bloom turn into shallow flats, and I’m expecting to see more of that in the coming weeks and months. Those areas aren’t just covered with pretty colors of flowers and grass—they’re also loaded with insects such as beetles, caterpillars, worms, and more. Both pre-spawn and post-spawn carp have been happily feeding in these buffet grounds, and catching them in ankle-deep water that’s covered with purple and pink flowers is a lot of colorful fun. As a plus, since the food items that reside in these newly flooded grounds are mobile, most of these fish are willing to chase down a prey item more aggressively than the clam eaters I’m used to in low-water years. You can often trigger a take by casting past these fish and slowly retrieving the fly to match the speed of a damselfly nymph, or slowly jigging a worm in front of a feeding carp. In fact, most of the spring fish I’ve caught have been while slightly moving the fly—a stark contrast from the drought years. Those years, they were keyed-in on clams, and moving the fly even slightly seemed to spook every carp that witnessed the unnatural movement. That’s another reason why this year would be the year to get out and learn how to chase these awesome fish. They’re slightly less spooky than the last few years—the high water makes them happy, which makes them an easier target than you might expect. However, an easy carp is still difficult to catch compared to most other freshwater fish species, so always approach them slowly, make sure to watch your shadows, and pick your casts well. A good carp angler takes fewer casts, and picks out the right fish and the right presentation, rather than casting at every fish they see.

Flooding over wildflower blooms can be spectacular