Flyfishing for Carp
Topic and Questions from Austin.

1. What is your favorite rod to target fly rod carp with?
2. What locations do you generally look for when targeting carp on the fly
3. What are your favorite fly patterns for carp?

Feel free to post any other tips, tricks or information about this topic.

1. What is your favorite rod to target fly rod carp with?

A 7.5' 6 weight TFO TiCr-X rod with a 6 weight line on it, OR, a 9' TFO 4 weight Professional rod with a 6 weight line on it.

The shorter rod gives you a little more line out which is why a 6 line on a 6 rod, plus it has a very soft tip that loads up incredibly quickly which helps with the often short casts you get sight fishing to carp.

The longer rod almost requires the heavier line weight since you are often so close to the fish.

2. What locations do you generally look for when targeting carp on the fly

The key is not to find carp, it's to find catchable carp. You need shallow water clear enough to see them in (2' or less or 3' stretching) or VERY shallow water (2-8") if it's dirty so you can see them crawling, tailing, and mudding.

3. What are your favorite fly patterns for carp?

The absolute best fly for carp is a Sucker Punch.

Second best fly is bead chain and the soft feathers off any bird you shot with a friend wrapped around a hook with a couple pieces of copper colored krystal flash.

Third best is commercial flies-- a bonefish puff works good in shallow water, a squimp works pretty good in deeper water (it usually has heavy eyes.)

Although, anything brown, olive, or orange and fuzzy and about 1 or 1.5 inches long will work.

As one would expect Dave has this covered pretty well. I can't offer much more, other than a good phrase for question 3:

Some redfish guys I know (and I'm sure other guys around the world for other fish) use the phrase "brown and down". It seems quite fitting here.

I'm not much of a fly fisherman, but I've enjoyed fly fishing in England for carp, but with a bit of a twist. If you can encourage carp to feed on the surface (we often use dog food particles catapulted out when carp start rising to insects) you can drill and attach the particles to a hair, or glue a cork (shaped like the particle) to a hook (feeding carp won't care about the difference till too late). These you can get in amongst the carp with a regular rod and a controller if they're far out, but it's more fun to fly cast the bait if they're in range. Lots of fun on a fly rod.