Sight casting to carp

Wednesday night after work I went down to an area I fish a lot during steelhead season, but not often during the warmer months. The water was low (about 65 CFM) and extremely clear. There was about four feet of visibility in some places, the best I’ve seen. I started catching fish as soon as I got there. I caught an average sized bass after a cast or two. I worked my way up river and caught another smallie hanging out near a rock pile. I continued to move up river and was standing in a sandy bottom pool that was three or four feet deep casting down river to a rock pile below me when I saw a carp cruising the around the bottom of the pool off to the side of where I was standing. I cast my fly to the carp and striped the fly very slowly, nothing. I decided to give it a second try before going back to the rock pile I was working before I saw the carp. I cast a little bit further out and started with the same slow stripping action and this time the carp took the fly. It was less of a smacking hit like a bass and more of a slow steady pull; but, the fish was on. The carp went on a couple of slow steady runs. Finally after a brief struggle, the fish was brought to hand. It was an average sized carp for this river. Nothing really special; but, it was the largest fish I caught that day. I have a picture below. It’s not the best picture because of how I held the fish to take the picture. I guess I should have taken the picture of the fish in the water rather than holding it. Oh well, live and learn. As I continued to fish up river, I caught another averaged size small mouth bass, and two very large shiners that were the size of an average sized bass! All together I caught six fish Wednesday night in the two and a half hours I was on the river. It was a good outing. Some strange things happened on my way out. As I was walking down river to the path that goes back to the parking lot, I heard some huge splashes in the water! It sounded like someone throwing bowling balls into the water from twenty feet up. I don’t know what made those splashes; the way it sounded was as if it were very large fish jumping out of the water. The splashing sounds were not made by ducks or anything like that and I didn’t see another person the whole time I was on the water. If those splashes were made by fish, they had to be huge! It got dark before I started walking out. The area I was at is a 15 minute walk through the woods from the river to the car. I saw several deer as I walked out through the woods in the dark. The deer were spooky looking when my head lamp lit up their eyes. The light made their eyes glow like the cat in Pet Cemetery. Needless to say I was happy to get to the car and out of the woods.