Fly fishers hold Lone Lake Carpathon

Published 12:18 pm Wednesday, August 3, 2011

What does fly fishing have to do with carp?

Usually not much, which is a big mistake since carp are a large, powerful fish and can be great sport for fly fishers.

In this case, members of the Evergreen Fly Fishing Club in Everett have been working to reduce the grass carp in Lone Lake, a great trout fishing venue on Whidbey Island.

The short version of a long story is that Lone was being choked out by weeds and officials planted the grass carp into the lake to help deal with the weed problem. Grass carp are vegetarians.

They’ve essentially stripped the lake of all its plants and many fly fishers are concerned that the bare lake will lose its bug life and its trout. The trout seem to be doing OK on daphnia and other edibles, but people are worried.

The carp planted in the lake are sterile, so they won’t reproduce. But the club received a permit to reduce their numbers by 100 by next year to create a better balance between carp and plants.

Hence the Carpathon.

The club’s Jake Jacobson organized the event last month.

Some 27 anglers went after the grass eaters, catching only five.

Jacobson reported that the slow going was a bit depressing until he looked at Chinook catch ratios, which were significantly worse.

“It seems fishing success rates for 10 pound plus fish is about the same whether they be salmon or carp,” he said. “So we should all feel better.”

He noted that so far the catch effort (including before the Carpathon) amounts to a kill of 31 carp. The permit expires at the end of 2012, so he’s hoping the fly fishers get better at carp fishing by then.

(FYI: They fooled around earlier with flies that looked like plants, but basically the carp want something with lettuce on it.)