Carp Adventure 2013

First carp fishing outing of the year. Too much rain, lots of gardens to set up, and a garage sale to prep have detracted from the more important but less critical aspect of life, Fishing! I also may have missed the best part of the morel season. While fishing for carp which involves sneaking through the underbrush, I found a few shrooms, so I was torn between looking for fish and looking for mushrooms, either one is good. I only had a couple of hours before school got out so I hurried down to the MN river by car with my bike on the back and a pack full of wading gear. I rode about a mile from the parking lot to a channel between two back water lakes. Turned out the water was so low in this particular backwater channel that waders were not required. Seemed odd since the river was pretty high, flowing about 12000 cfs. The first fish I cast to came along the shore from the right and paused to feed about ten feet away. Water clarity was marginal, I expected a carp, turned out to be my first shortnose gar on a fly, a crawfish like thing. It was no match for an 8 wt. I beached it when I set the hook, but he quickly rolled back in and made a couple of good runs. The carp were cruising the channel and not obviously feeding. I cast to a few and got one to chase the fly. Time was short so I started to blind cast and hooked this 25" fish. A few cast later another fish broke me off. Lesson forgotten, check your leader after you catch a fish, or maybe it was another gar?