I arrived at the river, put on the waders, and tied on my patented surface fly for carp. I drifted it through a pool at the end of a riffle and had three hits, but couldn't get a good hook set. On my next drift I got the hook set real good....and the fish broke me off at the tippet. That was it for the carp for the rest of the day. Mostly, they stayed down and cleaned the river bed. I couldn't get any of them to bite.
I ended up wading about a quarter of a kilometer - the river is knee deep in many stretches. Much of it reminded me of the Ottawa River around Bate Island - gravel and rock bottom. There were several channels cut by fast moving water and these were somewhat reminiscent of creeks out west in the Rockies. At the end of one of the channels, I saw dozens of fish milling about in the fast water. It wasn't deep, half a meter, but the water was very fast. The surface fly didn't rate a look, so I tied on a heavily weighted crayfish pattern. The fly was taken by the current and I let out a lot of line to allow it to rest on the bottom. A very slow retreive brought a few hits and, finally, fish on! Not a big fight on a 9-wt, but a fish is a fish.
This fish is a new species for me. It's called a big scaled redfin or "ugui". The colours were quite vivid as you can see. I'm not sure if that is its normal colour or if it is spawning colour. They were all about the same size as this guy, about 15" long maybe a pound and a half. They seemed to be jostling for position in the river and often leaping up to break the surface.
I went back to this section of the river again yesterday, but managed nothing other than a foul hooked ugui. Something interesting were the three goldfish in the river - all over 10 pounds.