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With the seminar behind it’s
all about fishing my last two days here in Arizona.
Today Steve Berry had a motorcycle race so it was Cinda Howard and I on
the urban assault of the Phoenix
area. Our destination was one we’ve been
fishing together for almost ten years.
I’m honestly not sure the name of the place but it’s near where the Arizona Cardinals stadium is. There are 21 small
manmade lakes surrounded by homes and sidewalks that are chock full of a
variety of warmwater species. Although
we could catch about anything, our main target was koi.
The weather this week has
been hotter than normal for November.
Sure, Phoenix
is always a hotspot but this week temperatures have been in the low 90°s every
day. The heat certainly hasn’t hurt the
fishing however and today was no exception.
On the first lake we fished Cinda and I landed over a dozen colorful
koi.
My choice of rod for koi is a
5-weight. That’s about par for the
course for me and carp. I’d like to find
a koi big enough to beat me up on the 5 but most of the koi we catch are about
20”. On occasion we get a honker that
tops the 5lb mark but these fish are not only rare, but smart as heck. The best flies for koi are bright colored
nymphs or sunken imitations of berries of the local overhanging trees.
The koi fishing was so easy
that it was almost boring. It was as if
these fish haven’t been fished too before.
To spice things up Cinda started specifically targeting only the pretty
looking koi and common carp. I took off
my nymph and replaced it with my olive hopper and searched out the grass carp
(white Amur). There was less around than
I remembered at this place but after a couple opportunities I landed a small
one. Meanwhile Cinda caught this glowing
koi-common-carp combo.
We’ve caught all kinds of
strange fish in these lakes over the years.
One in particular are giant guppy-like-goldfish looking things. They’re hard to fool into eating a fly but
fight like dish rags once you do hook one.
That’s probably because they have more dangling fins to drag around than
an angel fish. Today Cinda caught one of
the weirdest of all. I caught a small
one of these here years ago and never came up with what it was. It’s got the scales and face of a common carp,
the dorsal of a sailfish and the tail of a guppy. It’s probably a hybrid of some sort.
After giving a 110% through
90° heat for almost ten hours, Cinda and I called it a day at around 5:30. I believe I have my fill of koi that will
last me a few months at least. The day
was fun, relaxing and entertaining to say the least. Tomorrow it’s back to the challenging grass carp.
I think it would be cool to catch a koi, however the only place I know where to find them is in one of my neighbors back yard pond... He would kill me if I caught one of his koi. They cost him about 1,000 a fish...
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