Fish-Hawk.Net

Hi everyone.

Yesterday I got day off and went down to Montreal to try some shad/aloise fishing. I was down at the dam at 4:30 with hopes it'll be less crowded Monday morning. Did not have a chance to use my fly gear as it became a zoo shortly after I got there. I left at about 7 as I got bored after landing 4. Anyway on my way back I decided to stop somewhere on Nation to have a river for myself. This time I was not wrong. Found a decent spot with moving water and a lot of carp and suckers. Spent about 6 hours there to convince the fish and got a single carp bite. So back get back to the question: what kind of nymph patterns do you guys use for carp/sucker and how do you work it. As it seems I was definitely doing something wrong. I tried to use 12-14 pheasant tails, scuds and green drakes. Dead drifted as well as twitched. Advice on how to keep smallies off the line would be appreciated too.
Thanks

For carp you might try:
Lukes Carp Candy,
Olive (or Brown) Crazy Charlie, or
the tried and true woolly buggers.

For suckers I would probably go with small buggers, nymphs and soft hackle wet flies.

My experience with suckers is that they will not typically move to investigate a fly. You need to drift it within 4" of them otherwise they will simply ignore it. Carp on the otherhand will investigate a fly that is twiched on the bottom.

Todd

The reason I am asking about nymph pattern is that from my spinning gear experience I tend to use smaller (less then an inch) jigs/lures when water is clear and level is low and as it was about 2 feet of clear water at the spot my thought that imitation is the way to go. But I'll definitely give those a try.

You might still want to keep them small, say #8 or smaller in those clearwater conditions for carp.