I let the friend lead. I warned Frank that the hole was treacherous. The photo is taken down stream. The left side of the hole has a rock ledge that sticks out in to the main hole. One bad step and it becomes 8 feet quickly. The lower end of the hole is shallower and I have seen trout sun themselves in there in the past.
Frank stopped and was pointing at a fish in the shallows. He had sun glasses on. He said I brought him to carp water. I grabbed his sun glasses and looked at the the " big old carp" his words in the shallows sunning itself. Took off the glasses and told Frank to hold still. I wanted to try to cast to the "big old carp" before I could get in a cast I spooked it. Frank asked me "Why were you dinking with that dumb old carp?" I told Frank: "Carp don't have spots."
I was back there a couple times and could not raise the monster. I assumed it was a night time feeder and a night time attack was in order. The rock ledge and the big drop off put a damper on my night time enthusiasm and I put it on the back burner.
Just two weeks ago I was talking to a friend and he fished the hole and he spooked a huge fish out of the shallows. This piqued my curiosity . It has been raining non-stop since then and the water was too muddy and high to fish. It finally went down and started to clear. I thought a little bit of cloudy water would be good for a night time attack.
One of my friends from Chicago Dave Heyman told me about luck he had been having with mice and told me how to fish mice and when. I went to a local fly shop and got a couple Whitlock Mice. Dave told me to run the edges of the banks. Slow steady retrieve with a pause and twitch from time to time. The reason for working the edge was that this is where wayward mice might fall in and the HUGE night time predators were out hunting at night for this type of lost mouse.
I took my buddy Joe with me and we worked both sides of the hole. I was standing on the opposite side of the angler in the photo. Joe decided he was going to work the rock ledge drop off. It was 4am this morning. We were both casting. I could barely see Joe but I could hear him. The huge male hit like a freight train. The splash and roll was very loud and it sent shivers down the back of my neck. I didn't need to wait for him to yell..."Come HELP!" like he usually does.
We both had the same rig. A 8'6" 5/6 rod with a 2x leader on. I told Joe to calm down and let the thing tire itself. The hole was deep and I reminded him a couple of times when it made runs to give it side pressure so it would turn and stay out of the underwater trees. I looked at my watch when the battle started. It seemed like it took forever but the entire battle last 11 minutes.
My digital camera takes AWFUL photos in the darkness This is the best Glory Shot I took.
