Winter Dry Fly Tactics
One of the best things about chasing carp is the variety in which we find them feeding, and thus we can catch them in a variety of ways. One of my favorite ways to get them is on dry flies in the middle of the California “winter”, and I say “winter” in quotes since the weather is still pretty nice. Big groups of carp will feed just underneath the surface and on the surface on a variety of food items, and the techniques used to catch them during this time differ a lot from the rest of the year. While the focus in this article is on the winter dry fly carp, it applies to a lot of other dry fly carp you encounter throughout the year.
A group of carp feeding in the surface
The first thing to recognize is that during winter, the fish feeding up top are often concentrated in areas that have the most amount of food in the surface film, which can change a lot day by day. This makes them incredibly unpredictable, but I think it adds to the fun of chasing them. You need to move around a lot, looking at where the wind pushes surface food items, but also the different currents in the lake and where they deposit the foods the carp are eating. Often scum lines in the surface film give you a visual indication of where the food is at, but not all scum lines have fish on them, so don’t get stuck on waiting on one scum line to produce fish, but keep on your toes and move around.
Carp feeding on top are often more picky than when they are feeding on the bottom, so matching the hatch becomes more important. But matching the hatch for carp is more about the general action and shape of the food item, not exactly in how it looks, so it becomes paramount to figure out exactly how the fish are feeding, are they feeding on adult midges sitting on top of the surface film, or are they slurping emergers just underneath the surface? Sometimes you just see the top of their head breaking the surface, and those fish are feeding just underneath the surface film, while carp that are breaking the surface and opening their whole mouths on top of the surface film are more likely to be eating something on top of the water. Paying attention to this can pay dividends in avoiding frustration of fishing the wrong thing at the wrong time. And remember, carp are big, so even if a part of the mouth is breaking the surface it doesn’t always mean they are eating off the surface film, they might be feeding on things just underneath but the mouth breaks the surface just since they’re so big.
Often when carp are feeding on the surface, they’re clustered in big groups of fish, 20-50 fish clustered together, sometimes more. If you want to spook a lot of fish all at once, cast into the middle of such a group and see how it goes. More often than not, targeting the fish on the edges is a more productive route to success. I use very long leaders, 15-20 plus feet allows me to pick out certain fish while not putting my fly line over other fish and spooking them in the meantime. Don’t jump straight to casting a 20 foot leader if you are only used to using a 9 foot one, however, work your way up by slowly lengthening your leader every time, otherwise it’ll be less useful than it is helpful and will lead to a lot of frustration and spooked fish.
Another thing about the big groups of fish is if you just toss a fly in there and then try to strip it back to cast again, you’re likely to accidentally foul hook a fish, which is no fun. Not only is it a bummer, but a complete mess with spooking all the other fish, and fighting a big fish that’s hooked in the side or tail is hard work and it’s often better to break them off or try to get the fly loose by giving the fish a ton of slack and if you fish barbless hooks, it should just fall out really easily. To avoid this, I like to pick my fly up with a snake roll or a snap T, but the snake roll is more delicate and is less likely to spook fish. Not only are you not foul hooking into fish, but you can present the fly again to a group of fish without spooking them, since another easy way to spook a lot of fish at once is to have a midge imitation sprinting past a bunch of carp. So I tend to use an aerial snake roll on my pickup to just lift the fly into the air where it is at instead of dragging it though the surface, and an added plus to that pickup is that the speed you create with the snake roll loads the rod well immediately and you can make a cast and present the fly right away without unnecessary false casting.
“99 Luftballons” - a foam balloon midge emerger
As for flies to use, there’s a huge variety of flies to mess around with when fish are feeding in the surface film. In winter, the mornings often start with the fish eating water fleas right under the surface, and as we get closer to noon and it warms up, they start eating chironomids and midge emergers, and by the afternoon are often full on chowing on a mix of emergers and adult midges. Rain events can impact this as well, and often deposit ants, beetles, and other terrestrials into the water which carp will eat with abandon. Remember that carp are big, so if you tie flies make sure to tie these imitations on stronger hooks, but even so I don’t often go any smaller than a size 16, as you start bending out hooks and losing a lot more fish when you go to a size 18. To imitate anything smaller, just tie a smaller profile fly on a bigger hook. Or, tie clusters like a griffith gnat, which works great as an adult midge imitation, but also when drowned on a fluorocarbon leader, imitates a cluster of water fleas well.
Dry fly fishing in the winter is probably the best way to spend a winter that I know, and is a fun mix of head hunting and big fish action. I often see some of the biggest fish of the year in winter and early spring feeding up top, and while it can often be very frustrating and technically difficult, it’s also just such a fun way to fish.