“Why fly fish for carp?” more than a few still ask. Although the answer should be self-evident — it’s a fish — let’s reprise a story from way back in the early days of this magazine…
The year was 1997. Cell phones were the size of guinea pigs, though not as handsome. Not only that, The Lisa Person had spawned our daughter, Sophia, the year before, and Sophie had now learned to say “nose” and “ ball.” She woke one Oakland morning lying between us, touched her mother’s face, and said, “Nose,” then turned to mine, smiling happily as she said —
— “Ball!”
That’s relevant, barely, because the photograph that Valentine Atkinson shot to illustrate this story became “The Snout Cover.” With this distinction, Cal Fly Fisher became the first fly-fishing journal to feature carp so prominently. But a pioneering book followed soon after, seemingly out of the blue, with the publication of Carp on the Fly: A Flyfishing Guide, by Brad Befus and John Berryman. Who knew how many eager fans would make this aspect of fly fishing a success? Other carp tomes have appeared since then, and not too long ago, I received The Orvis Beginner’s Guide to Carp Flies: 101 Patterns & How and When to Use Them (Skyhorse Publishing), by Dan C. Fraser. If that doesn’t imply universal acceptance of carp as a game fish — and it doesn’t, in this country — the Orvis imprimatur certainly suggests that the big minnows have a fin in the door.
Whatever Cal Fly Fisher’s role in advancing carp as a species worthy of our attention, it’s not as if anglers haven’t been fishing carp, hard, for several thousand years, one way or another. What might be more important is how much fun we had on the grand adventure recounted below, and in describing our epic grandiosely, tongues firmly planted in the cheeks of wide catfish grins. And we’re grinning still, nearly twenty years after this story first ran.
“You can relax now. But when the time comes, our hearts will be pounding. I promise.”
The speaker nods his head for emphasis. His resemblance to Valentine Atkinson is truly startling. Of course, the real Atkinson is one of our sport’s premier photographers, the kind of guy who has fished everywhere you hope to, hit grand slams with giant permit and 120-pound tarpon, hammered peacock bass in some jungle. So if this was him — for the sake of easy reference, let’s just pretend — and you heard him talking about a heart-pounding angling adventure that he would photograph if Someone Else served as subject and writer while Somebody kept watch for cops . . .
. . . you’d certainly listen carefully. Especially since this would happen in a place only a bus ride and a misdemeanor away.
Your misdemeanor, as it happens.
The fellow next to Val is attentive, that’s for sure. Author, first-tier editor of an awesome magazine, and would-be lookout, he also nods, revealing with that gesture an elegant economy of motion: he agrees and his lips fall to the rim of a martini glass recently refilled with cucumber vodka. It’s just the kind of nod-and-drink thing some people would associate with Richard Anderson, whom we’ve met.
I imitate him, of course, as would any writer. The cold cuke juice isn’t half bad. In fact, it’s good enough to make me philosophical: Val’s right, I decide; I am relaxed, partly because I’ve decided that when I report this story, I’ll call myself Ambrose Bierce. That’s a writer’s prerogative.
Richard nods again. “What we really need is a shot of [Ambrose Bierce] in handcuffs, as the cops lead him away.”
That’s an editor’s prerogative, apparently — and exactly the third time Richard’s made this suggestion, which is making me edgy. I even sneak a look around the tables near ours, mindful of other ears. Probably not a problem: The Infusion Bar and Restaurant, tonight’s Command Central, caters to those barely postpubescent business types who can afford four-dollar drinks and fifteen-dollar entrees [Remember, this was 1997]. It’s an unlikely place for The Law to lie in ambush for urban guerrilla anglers, who are a mainly Popov bunch, when it comes to vodka.
Meanwhile, Val is measuring between his hands. “I mean, these fish are like this. They look smart, and the water’s pretty clear. I experimented with them today, with bread and broccoli.”
I can’t help myself — “Broccoli?”
“Right. It’s what I had in the fridge. They would rise for it — ” “Really?”
“Yes. But they’d usually spit it out. I think they like bread better.”
The editor may or may not be mumbling about handcuffs again, but I am charmed and intrigued. Vegetable chum. And grains — two basic food groups. This is particularly important information, since I’m supposed to tie flies for this trip. Whole wheat I can do with clipped deer hair. But: “What made you try broccoli?”
Val looks slightly put off. “Like I said, I had it in the fridge. And the day before, they were eating algae. So — ”
“It matched the hatch?” “Yes. Right. More or less.”
I can’t emphasize enough how interesting I find this, but I don’t want to be rude.
Instead, I launch a vaguely pedantic monologue on carp.
Right, carp: technically the biggest of “minnows,” family Cyprinidae, evolved in Southeast Asia, emigrated throughout Europe, and were eventually imported to this country from England by a German entrepreneur in the late 1800s. Washington politicians immediately declared them “miracle fish” and offered live stockings to districts that voted to please them. Payoffs were shipped across the country by train in containers previously holding pig parts — thus, I believe, the evolution of the phrase “pork barrel politics.”
Precisely because they are miracle fish, carp survived these grim journeys; when it comes to breathing, these fish can make do with a moist Handi Wipe. For one thing, their blood contains a unique form of hemoglobin, which traps oxygen with unparalleled efficiently. For another, when utterly deprived of usable oxygen, carp begin to self-ferment, producing alcohol —
“What proof?” demands the editor. “What?”
“What proof? This alcohol they’re making.”
— which they break down into sugars, then energy. One Indian cyprinid, Rasbora daniconius, lasted 102 days while hermetically sealed in a tube, losing 75 percent of its body weight before succumbing.
That suggests carp are among the hardiest of fish. Consider them also among the easiest fed, omnivores that can eat almost anything we do, even after we have Large eyes with many cells in the retina help them find their food; they also have excellent hearing, listening through their big swim bladders. According to one study reported in The New Compleat Angler, carps’ memories are so good they learn mazes as well as laboratory rats. No wonder that Smithsonian Magazine insists they are now the most ubiquitous fish in North America.
North America, it so happens, is also the only continent where carp are widely despised. Worldwide, more tons of carp are farmed for food each year than any other freshwater fish. Japanese koi are carp, which means that some specimens are the most pricey fish anywhere, maybe the most expensive items with fins, excepting only the Concorde. Carp are so admired by English coarse anglers that these folks practice a kind catch-and-release ethic that requires Violators Shall Be Hurt by Fanatics in Groups —
“Where did you get all this?”
It’s possible the editor’s eyes are glazed like that out of admiration. It’s possible. “I did a piece for Field & Stream. In ’89 or ’90, I think.”
Val nods politely. “Do you have a solid-color shirt? Blue would be good. About this blue.” He points to some crockery. When I make a noncommittal noise, he and the editor agree that one or the other will provide my clothing. I am mildly offended and sulking, because I never got to the part about carp’s life span — somewhere between 50 and 100 years — or their fecundity, which I recall as around four hundred thousand eggs per pound of female. Then I remember the broccoli and am happily distracted.
“ — the key” I hear Val saying, “is to get an editor to commit to paying our bail and fine.” “Absolutely,” says Richard. “I’ll go as high as five dollars.”
“There we go, then. I did check, by the way: there’s no sign prohibiting fishing. None.” I like that. “Then it’s not a problem. They have to warn you.”
Richard demurs. “Ignorance is no excuse.”
“All right, all right. Then we’ll tell them we’re doing an article, just experimenting, la-la-la.”
“No way,” says Richard firmly. “It’s got to be something any of our readers can get away with. That’s the point.” An editor, heart and soul, I tell you. “We’ll claim we were practice-casting,” he continues, “and caught fish by accident.”
Certain kinds of people miss details, and the same sort often run late, so I do and I am on the morning we’ve set for the expedition. I’m also cranky, glaring at a mirror that reveals my beard going gray in streaks. This evidence of aging provokes striking realizations. The first is that I started sneaking around to fish carp during the Eisenhower administration and continued right through Nixon’s second term. During that era, I must have been nabbed on forbidden waters twenty times. Inevitably, capture led to threats of arrest, fines, and worse. What saved me then was that even notoriously nasty security guards, like those at the Phoenix Zoo, seemed to feel foolish about the idea of marching such a small miscreant “downtown,” accompanied, as I would have been, by “Exhibit A: Fishing Hand Line Wrapped around a Fat Pencil.”
But that was then, my mirror suggests. I suspect those same fellows would react differently today, when even I consider me suspicious looking, or at the very least, unnecessarily hirsute.
I am ruminating along those lines when — eureka, it only then strikes me — that never mind my Bierce nom de plume, with Valentine shooting pictures, this same streaky gray mug could end up on a full-page shot. Me, and a carp — “The Carp and I” — snout to snout, swarthy together and bound forever in an image somebody, somewhere, will save for official purposes. As in the Library of Congress.
I decide to BART over to SF. When a woman sees me riffling fly boxes, she elects to sit beside me in order that we might chat about her ex-husband. A “fly-fishing maniac,” she says grimly, glaring with a gimlet eye, “That’s all he did and all he was good for. That’s it. Is that the same for the rest of you?”
A wee challenge. Her expression is familiar, because a pal of mine kept a ferret. I briefly consider telling her I haven’t been “the rest of us” yet. Then I have a better idea, good practice for the cop I may meet later. “I’m not sure,” I reply with a warm smile. “But perhaps late some night you’ll want to find out . . . and I am in the phone book. Anderson. That’s Richard, with an R.”
Val has laid out sweet rolls and coffee. By way of easing into the criminal mentality, we eat while walking around his apartment, ogling exhibits of antique or treasured tackle, his hat collection.
And fish photos, of course. In his living room, there’s one shot of him grappling a billfish, another of that Fly Rod & Reel cover where he and a guide hold between them a tarpon the size of kayak. Standing directly in front of these, Val says, “I’ve been watching those carp every day — they are a-ma-zing. Just monsters. This is going to be fantastic. Are we really ready?”
He’s dead serious. We’re getting there, too. First, the rod selection.
Val shoots for and represents a company, but that’s not the reason both choices carry that brand name. “I have stacks of these,” he explains. One is too perfect for our purposes, an older eight-foot four-weight that breaks down into five pieces — five, count ’em — and actually fits in my canvas briefcase, strung up and ready to fly. The reel is a three-hundred-dollar clunker. “Stuff must be expendable. So we can pitch it, if we have to, or in case they take it away from us.”
For my part, I have secreted upon me a landing device invented by Kate Howe and manufactured by me. I’ll need it, I’m certain; and it may be that I have after many, many years at last stumbled upon a way around Richard’s policy forbidding the promotion of my products. Said rule represents an ethical position worthy of Ralph Nader, which Richard enforces with Stalinist vigor.
Now, How to Dress for Arrest.
There’s no objection to the Urban Angler look I’ve carefully selected to take this fall in winter: jeans, and boots without laces to hang from. Val has a shirt at ready, this long-sleeved, full-cut number, blowzy, but with good drape, a deep rust color hearkening back to Nature’s own palette — so unlike the diaphanous shirts of last trout season, all mauve and taupe and oleander, which this year we realize were simply clingy nouvelle “bodice bursters” with less subtlety than leather stirrups and stiletto heels — may they never return —
“Looks good,” says Val.
“I don’t know,” murmurs Richard. “In black and white, it’ll show gray.”
Val shakes his head. “I’m telling you, we’re going to get one of those fish. This will be a color cover shot. Somewhere.”
“What do you mean by that?” demands Rich. “See what else I’ve got.”
Richard likes a pale shirt better — a shade of peach that would show white, but so diaphanous I’m too humiliated to speak. Worse yet, it has all those mysterious loops and button-tab somethings that baffle fly fishers, but that might come in handy down the hill, at some bar in the Castro. Val ponders, then decides. Rust it is.
The Great Hat Controversy, however, lasts almost ten minutes. I end up sampling my way down the length of Val’s wall, where hang his specimens, then returning to the first. Richard and Val each suggest the other has no real understanding of baseball caps, but it’s only tension, the kind of high-wire hum paratroopers feel as the plane begins to climb.
Richard’s Jeep, a black kidney breaker, brings back fond memories. For example, on the smoothest of roads, the brutal suspension reminds me of a dry freestone streambed I drove down when racing to fight a forest fire in the Kaibab.
I don’t remember so many commuters on that trip, though we’ve waited for the worst of traffic to settle. Even after fourteen lights in six blocks, the first view of the pond surprises us. There’s the water — and there’s the tree-cutting crew not a hundred yards away, two guys in orange vests. They are leaving even as we pass, but their presence seems ominous.
So does the layout. From the road, it’s obvious that both north and south banks are distressingly exposed, visible to like fifty cars a minute. But those are the choices: the east and west ends of the pond — perhaps it’s three acres in all — are dense with brush, choked down to the water.
We park, make our way down the path. As we walk, Val and Richard discuss where Richard will stand on the slope opposite and the code he will call to us when he sees danger: It’s a dog-walking ruse: “Here Val! Here boy! Here Val-Val-Val!” Nobody mentions that we’ve forgotten to bring a leash in an area where one is certainly required. Presumably Richard is walking his cat.
Thirty feet from the bank, Val stops suddenly. “It’s changed,” he says. “It’s really changed.” In fact, what he had described as clear water, or at least the clearest pond of any in the park, now floats rafts of algae. In places, the stuff is as thick looking as lily pads. It’s especially heavy near a small tree that Val had hoped would provide a modicum of cover. The only open water nearby lies just below a steep hillside.
“It doesn’t look good,” Val says.
On the other hand, for shooting pictures, the setting is perfect. A towering tree, tall as any this side of the redwoods, rises up from a wild thicket of vines, blackberry brambles, and wet hummocks of high grass. The sun has burned through the early morning clouds, so we’re washed in light both brilliant and soft, reflecting green everywhere, light shades of new leaves mingling with the dark survivors of winter. The pond mirrors it all from where we stand, smooth and emerald, distinct from the color of land around it only for the addition of a cool, slate gray. Distinct also for a rise forty feet out, a take so pronounced and deliberate that a ring of water swells out from a sink-sized depression left in the surface where a large body has pulled down. . . .
“Right here,” I say. I am already setting up the rod.
Val laughs. “What did I tell you? But it might be safer if — ”
“Why don’t we try here,” says Richard, double-timing toward his station, catless, leaving us to the carp.
Which are here. We see a small school moving now, twenty feet off shore — dark, heavy fish, save for one of the biggest, which is a kind of smoky gold with gleaming scales etched at the edges by black. I count four, then six — not as many as I expected. They move with slow certainty that looks somehow luxurious, like creatures of leisure swimming a constitutional on some aquatic promenade.
“What’s this?” asks Val. I turn to see him lifting a tangle of heavy monofilament. “Is this yours?”
I shake my head, convinced immediately that the game has changed. The English say that few carp are caught twice. And that they learn by watching.
I kneel, work out line. The little rod is parabolic and flexes all the way to my hand. The fish travel past us, right to left, paralleling the bank. I cast well ahead, watch intently. Even from above, they look fat. By the occasional hesitation or effortless tilt, I am convinced they are feeding, but at the pace of diners already satiated and now selecting dinner mints. One lifts his head to my crust of deer hair. Not two inches away, he shifts to one side, slides by.
Time to check the pulse. “Val! Val! Here Val!”
“Derelict” really does describe a man who takes drink beyond a point, and this one seems utterly absorbed as he hikes behind us, down the bank, to take his seat at the bench near the small tree Val coveted. The man’s mostly hidden from me by branches, but I have the sense his stare is set, that he’s unlikely to see us or to care a whit if he does.
I roll cast again to fish we see cruising. Four times, five. No response. I dare a longer reach; nothing.
“Boy, I thought they’d be right on it,” says Val.
It takes me a minute to tie on a dropper the color of algae. “Take your time,” he adds, fiddling with his Nikon. Sure I will, though by now we’ve been observed by a thousand or two cars, many of which are that brand of expensive German sedan preferred by autocrats with cell phones. Just the kind of twits who call in minor infractions even as they slaughter pedestrians in crosswalks.
First cast with the dropper, I see a fish of four pounds track the nymph’s descent, accelerate toward it, then turn away faster than he’d come.
“Judas Priest.”
“You know,” Val says. “I think they might be smarter than I thought.” “They’ve been fished for.”
“Maybe so. Looks like it.”
Another refusal. My right knee aches. The nymph sinks the deer crust. I knew that hair was too fine for spinning, but didn’t think it would need to float so long. When both flies disappear from view, I balance the little rod in my palm, as if to hair-set a trigger. But carp can mouth a bait without moving line, and a fly won’t long stand the inspection of those lips. Val shoots a photo.
“Val! Here Val! Val!”
We see the man and he us. Later, Richard will say that he might have worn an orange vest, but from our perspective, it looks like a shirt in not quite the official color. Certainly he’s studying us intently, from directly across the pond, perhaps three hundred feet away.
I’ve been holding the rod below the tops of some high grass in front of me, trying to offer no silhouette. But what, pray tell, can we pretend to be doing?
“Touch me, Val. Touch me there.” “What?”
Nah, I don’t even think of that ruse for a week. But it’s the one that might have worked. “Don’t worry about him,” says Val.
I’m not, much. I’m too worried about these fish. I watch a fifth or sixth approach another cast, veer away at just inches.
It’s got to be smell.
“You know,” says Val, “Hal Janssen says smokers should mask their scent.”
For years I rinsed my hands in vinegar before I fished. Could be nicotine, or other chemicals in my skin. Might even be the deer hair.
Val chooses and ties on the next fly of the dozen I’ve brought, this one an orange Glo Bug pattern. Carp are infamous for eating other species’ eggs, which is one reason they’ve lost our love.
There’s exactly one fish visible by the time we’re ready. It’s a big, dark beast, a solitary cruiser, heading right, this time.
“Here Val! Here Val!”
Richard has edged down the hill and from behind the cover of a shrub points toward the orange watcher. Val waves and nods, not the least bit catlike. I let the Glo Bug soak a moment, cast, watch it slowly drift down. The carp continues toward it. He looks to turn, but suddenly I lose sight of him in the tall tree’s reflection, so I am watching the orange when the black back appears a yard behind the fly, closing with supreme confidence. The head angles down.
I strike by sight. “Got ’em.”
“You got one?” “Yes.”
I actually see the fish lift his head as if to test the tension, even as I flip clear a coil of line that falls toward the water and then snaps up toward the stripping guide. A dozen more feet whisper through my fingers until I’m on the reel, which spins nearly silent, because for three hundred dollars, you don’t get a damn drag.
Val has dropped down. The camera clicks. “Hold the rod up,” he says, because I have laid it nearly parallel to the ground, pulling left even as I surrender sixty feet to the run. I lift to vertical for an instant — Val shoots — then I drop down again, marveling at a flex now deep as a longbow. Val shoots, says something, shoots. Then, “I’m through the roll. I’m changing film.”
My turn to reassure. “Take your time. This will be awhile.”
Odds are. I’m nearly to backing. The line slicing the surface spooks a school of fish way out. Forty feet beyond that, a trio of coots flees a disturbance just beneath them.
“Is he big? Is he strong?” Val’s voice is urgent and happy. His face is once again hidden by the camera.
“Big. Very strong.”
“Wonderful. Hold that position . . . great. Again. Now how’s he fighting?”
I almost laugh, but just then the fish changes direction, rushing toward our bank at an oblique angle, heading for a spot where tree branches trail into the water. For the first time I bear down on the rim and test the tippet.
“Raise your rod. Raise the rod.” “Wait a second.”
The fish swirls, doubles back. “Good. That’s great. How big is he? “One of the big ones.”
“That’s so great. Man.” “Here Val! Here Val!”
“Forget that! Never mind — watch the fish!”
I do, seeing Val creep closer at the periphery of my vision. Then the fish turns to swim directly at us, and I am stripping fast, the rod pulsing with each pull of my arm. At twenty feet we get a glimpse of him. At ten he sees us. I swear I see his eye roll; the rod arcs sharply down. Just as the last loose line is again snapping toward the spool, a loop warps around the reel handle, but the rod’s soft action surrenders so much I get a moment of mercy — and back on the spool.
“How big is he?” Val asks softly. “How much do you think he weighs?”
Carp have always seemed to me a little light for their size. “Six pounds. Maybe eight.” “He’s much darker than I thought.”
At the end of this run, the rod tip rises half a foot, as the fish reluctantly lifts his head. It won’t be long now.
I crab-walk to the edge of the water. The soil looks like soft mud, but Val’s already checked and found it slick hardpack. I grind in a boot heel. With my left hand, I remove a mesh bag from my pocket, slip my hand through the mouth, stretch to feel tension from a lanyard tethered to my waist. A carp may not be as slippery as a bonefish, but close enough. I’ll need to hold this one up for a picture, and he’s so broad I won’t find a decent grip anywhere but at his tail.
Four minutes and two runs later, that proves true. And even his tail is thicker than my wrist. I have it, all right, but three times my other hand slips from beneath his head — I’m trying not to touch his gills. Irony: where I grew up, regulations required anglers to kill all carp caught.
At last he settles. Val rinses his face — the fish’s — and begins shooting over and over. With hat, without. Looking at camera, looking at carp. Val is completely absorbed, engaged, focused more closely than his lens. His directions are quick and excited. Once I look away to check on the orange man — he’s gone! and soon also, our right to vote! — but Val orders my head around. “Don’t worry about it, never mind, this is great. I just hope the fish isn’t too dark and can’t you smile any better than that?”
It’s the streaked beard — I knew it.
“Tilt his belly up.” I do. Carp have mobile eyes, and one of his is watching mine. Lacking any other expressive feature, he appears calm and even seems to rest. Suddenly, I wonder if fermentation has already begun — if he’s already drunk.
“Cheers. To the musketeers of the magnificent carpcapade.”
We raise aperitif glasses, because Val has only an ancient bottle of Grand Mariner in his cabinet, just enough. We’re posing on his deck in front of moose antlers. The timer goes off, with flash. “I want to go back,” says Val firmly. In fact, before we’d even trotted up to the Jeep with the deed done and recorded, Val was glancing back over his shoulder. “This is crazy. Crazy.”
Of course.
“ I mean, how can we leave all those fish?” Richard laughed then and laughs now.
“You know, it really was easier than I thought,” Val continues. “Not the fish — they were harder. They had me worried. But you know, the mechanics of it all.”
“Face it, we’re good criminals,” Richard declares. He hasn’t yet mentioned his disappointment that there’s no shot of cops folding me into a squad car, no grainy black-and-white of my face above a ID plate or divided by bars.
“How did he fight again?” asks Val. “Like a brown trout, but maybe longer.”
“He wasn’t actually long, though. Just heavy. Really deep.” “Big fish,” says Richard.
“And get this: I’ve got to jog by them tomorrow, look down, and know what I’m missing.” Val is clearly dismayed. “That doesn’t seem possible. Does it?”
I’m remembering how the little rod flexed in my hand, wondering if I could have actually seen a curve in the cork grip. I do like that rod.
“We can always go back,” says Richard. “And if we didn’t get a decent shot, we’ll have to.”
Val shakes his head. “We got the shot. I know it.”
He looks wistful for another moment, then brightens. So does Richard, looking over his glass.
“We don’t need an excuse,” says Val. “We know where they are,” says Richard. “And that they will take a fly.”
After a week, the memories remain. And in the end, perhaps it’s not the carp that is most remarkable, miracle fish though it might be. Maybe there’s another magic to consider, however modest:
Among the three of us, we have well over a hundred years of angling experience. With Val leading the way, naturally, we’ve fished like thirty states, including Alaska; add Canada, Mexico, Belize, the Bahamas, Christmas Island, New Zealand, Polynesia, Southeast Asia, many parts of Europe — every continent but Antarctica. We’ve landed several score species of freshwater fish, somewhat fewer, but lots from the salt. We make part or all of our living from the business end of the sport, read what must total a hundred thousand pages a year, examine a whole bunch of pictures.
Yes, it’s obvious where I’m going — to the idea that we could still thrill to a dandy adventure of stealing off to catch carp. Of course, we compounded the thrill by exaggerating fears of a fine we could have easily paid, or Richard could, and embarrassment we would survived and probably bragged about.
All of which happened in a day of our lives and in a world where also happened horrible things —
Which doesn’t suggest that our morning needs to mean any more than this: when it comes to passions that provide pleasure, however esoteric, odd or slimy,
Carpe diem, seize the day. Carpe carp. Carpe that sucker by the tail.
