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The golden scales of a freshwater bonefish from Johnson City, TX.

Over the last decade or so, the fly fishing community's perception of carp has changed dramatically. Carp, which was not long ago widely seen as a species of "trash fish" only chased by fishermen wielding spinning rods with mish-mashed balls of corn meal and table scraps tied to the end of their line has reached fairly wide acceptance as one of the finest game fish available to anglers. Add in the fact that carp are more widely distributed across the US and the globe than perhaps any other species of game fish, offering a gross abundance of angling opportunities, and it is easy to understand why so many anglers are looking to get started chasing carp.

But where to start? Especially for the trout fisherman, pursuing carp is considerably different than heading out in search of the normal quarry. Fishing for carp is much more akin to fishing for bonefish and other flats species (which has fairly earned carp the nickname "freshwater bonefish"), so if you are accustomed to that kind of fishing you are going to be more prepared for chasing carp. Carp, in fact, can be radically different from trout in and it is important to understand the differences if you intend to target them, as applying tactics that you have learned while trout fishing typically won’t work well and will often lead to poor results.

Smith Optics' new Dockside frames with Blue Mirror ChromaPop lenses.

It's that time of year when manufacturers start announcing the new products they'll be debuting at this year's IFTD/ICAST show, which runs from July 16-18 in Orlando, Florida. Last week, Sage announced new rod and reel offerings and this week Smith Optics announced four new frames, each of which will feature their ChromaPop lenses.

Noting their "long-standing commitment and dedication to the fishing community," Smith is highlighting their new Dockside frame, which Smith "created [as a] new fishing-specific frame with the avid waterman in mind," and which it describes as a "large fitting frame that provides superior coverage from sun reflection on and off the water."

“Luckily, though, there are still a few guys around who will look you straight in the eye and say, eloquently and to the point, ‘It’s been too goddamned hot for too long and the river has gone off.’”John Gierach, Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing

I cut my fly fishing teeth on John Gierach, and when he first published those words back in 1990, it all seemed innocent enough. Sure, ’88 was a hot son-of-a-gun, and the legendary waters around Yellowstone were beaten up by the heat in ways that nobody back then ever anticipated. Still, it seemed like an anomaly. Weather does crazy stuff. Some years are wet, others are dry; some are hot, some are cold, and some, on those occasions when the fishing gods happen to smile down from on high, are classic ‘Goldilocks' just right. That’s how it always worked, and nobody I knew back in the early ‘90s ever considered that things might end up differently.

Fast forward to 2014, though, and any mention of extreme weather starts to sound ominous.

“Fluctuations in the weather used to be just that, but now, with everyone looking over their shoulders at global climate change, there’s the fear that any extreme could become the new normal. And when you guide fishermen for a living, the thought of your rivers drying up is the stuff of nightmares.”

That’s Gierach again, from his book All Fishermen Are Liars, and he frames our current reality in language that’s awfully hard to ignore. So what is the truth about climate change? What is the “new normal” - and how will it impact us as anglers?

Troy went tutti-frutti. I, chartreuse and white.

Color. It’s the key. Find the right combination and you can fill the boat with rockfish. If not, you’ve got a long day ahead. It’s all about color.

For the most part, fly fishing for stripped bass as they move up the river to spawn has a basic formula; eight or nine weights, 350-500 grain sinking lines (depending on flow) and sizable clousers. Chuck and duck, count it down to the bottom, and retrieve in short, snapping strips until you feel the leader tick into the rod tip that you’ve buried as deep as you can off the side of the boat. Wait for the thump. It’s hard work and a day of it will wear on you.

So us the sun rose, we opened the boxes and ruffled through the deer hair. Troy started with his favorite pink-and-white while I tied on red and yellow. Nothing happened. Troy switched to tutti-frutty (pink and chartreuse) and I pulled out chartreuse and white and we each boated a couple in a five-minute spurt, proving nothing. As quickly as they started, the bites went away.

Headwater Trout Stream

A spending bill in the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee shouldn’t be the place the Clean Water Act gets neutered, but if a handful of senators on the committee have their way this week, that’s exactly what could happen.

Earlier this spring, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers announces a proposed rule to clarify the protection given to small headwater streams by the Clean Water Act—a couple of misguided Supreme Court decisions in the early and mid-2000s muddied the water and left some of the most important trout and salmon habitat unprotected under the CWA.

This rule is now out for public comment, and will be well into July. But, if committee allows the spending bill to be amended by senators willing to play politics with clean water, then the rulemaking just becomes a colossal waste of time.

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