Last night, I woke up to the sound of rain pelting our metal window awnings. Normally good news, checking the weather forecast for the next couple of days, apparently rain will continue. But you know what that means — goodbye spring carp spawn.

Man, was that fun! It was my first spring spawn, and now I know why the more seasoned veteran re-checks his fly box in anticipation. During the last week or so, fish were everywhere — holding, circulating, tailing — waiting for (enjoying) nature’s main event.

Of course, the down side to catching carp during this season is getting them to strike. Their minds are on romance, not Glo Bugs.

Any trout fisherman who’s been around will do two things before the first cast: check to see what bugs are on the water, in the trees or the creekside grass; and pull a nice scoopful off the bottom to see what creepies are in it. That way, you can cover dries and nymphs — at least that’s how the theory goes.

During the six months or so I’ve been carping, I’ve never seen any sort of hatch on our river, nor have I found any crawlies in riverbed samples. There are crayfish for carp to munch, but it makes you wonder what our omnivorous friends chew on to get so gigantic! Our river bottom is an odd mix of concrete, mud and sand.

Case in point, Wednesday, we were trying to get any of the dozen or so fish my son and I spotted to strike. Tailing indicates a fish feeding by butting its head into the bottom to dislodge a meal. The go-to fly on the L.A. River is the lowly Glo Bug, an egg pattern, either weighted or not, in either chartreuse or white. The hot pink, unnatural colors don’t work here.

Anyway, think spawning salmon. Same deal. You basically have to entice a fish who really isn’t hungry to strike. Will and I ran through the fly box — chartreuse and white Glo Bugs, without and with weight; the trusty San Juan worm in red; a larger size Wooly Bugger in green; a larger size Hare’s Ear; even a dry hopper, just for grins. Nada, squat, nary a strike.

The ticket turned out to be a size 18 bead head Prince Nymph. The flash, the “shock and awe,” got tails wagging. And the pull on a Loomis 5 weight, the sound of fly line moving to backing, the run …

What turned our smiles upside down was losing the fish under freshwater seaweed.  The warmer-water bloom made us clean the fly before every cast. And in this situation, the carp certainly knew that a nice, heavy roof of weed would help him (her?) to break us off.

Bummer.

But, then again, that’s why we all keep coming back for more!

See you on the river, Jim Burns

Oh, to be footloose, with fly rod in hand, in the San Gabriel Mountains. No tedious drive to the Owens River; no heart-thumping commute to the Kern. Yesterday, the January temperature was in the middle-50s, so my son, Will, and I decided to avenge our recent skunk on the L.A. River by visiting a cousin, literally 10 minutes from my wife’s office in Arcadia.

As we made our way from the sparsely used parking lot, hikers on the trail looking at our fly rods stopped to utter either a statement, or a question. Either,

“There aren’t any fish up here.”

Or,

“Are there fish up here?”

The answer to both, is a simple, “ye-hah!”
It was a wonderful home coming. Whereas, stalking the elusive golden bonefish is still something I’m fine tuning, I’ve fished the San Gabes for years. And, basically you’ve got your teeny-weeny trout — mostly — then once in a while the fish gods throw in something to make it really exciting.

Will and I brought a Sage SP 3 weight and a Winston Ibis 4 weight, both really nice stream rods, well-suited to the area’s steep canyon walls and narrow, faster-running waters. We’d strung up 6x tippets, and kept it simple with hi-viz Parachute Adams 18s.

“Gotten any strikes?” I asked Will, while munching on a Fresh & Easy Italian sandwich.

He looked at me as if four casts didn’t warrant a gentle prod from the old man. Yet, on his fifth cast, there appeared the strike that I so often get from this hole.

He pulled up a small rainbow, and that set the afternoon’s tone, even as it clouded over, got windy-nasty and the near-freezing water chilled my fingers beyond my So. Cal. comfort zone.

I could have gone on like that for a long while, reading the stream, then having smaller fish take the fly, over and over again.

But, like I said, the fish gods can be unpredictable. And so, as we both cast into the biggest hole, I hooked up, watching the rod tip bend with a gift larger than most in this shimmering water.

“Hey!” I called out to Will above the noise of cascading water, just in time to see his Winston’s tiptop bend as if it were staring into the misty pool to see what had come onto the line.

Father-son hook up; same time; two ‘bows of the “keep ‘n’ eat” variety. We looked at each other with astonished eyes, with satisfied grins, with ripples of 20 years of past trips moving between us. Fly-fishing can move beyond the simple joys of the sport and play easily in the profound. It can keep fathers and sons together through rocky teen years and beyond.

Our new friends got their photo-op, then we returned them to frigid waters.

Crazy fun.

Will wanted to stay for one more fish, and, sure enough, he hooked up again within a few minutes. As he pulled this one out, suddenly cries issued from above. I looked up by the waterfall to see four young people waving, taking pictures, shouting, as Will smiled. I thought the crowd overly enthusiastic for a stranger’s accomplishment.

As they left, Will came over to me and said, again in amazement, “Those are four other students from my program!”

What are the chances?

Would you believe me if I told you that after we hiked to the trail’s top, away from the water, I picked a lady bug from Will’s arm?

See you on the water, Jim Burns

I met Mario and his friend as they rode their bikes under the Hyperion Bridge. When he called to me, at first I felt unnerved. Then, looking around, I felt foolish to think that this bright-faced boy might be up to no good.

“Fly fishing?” he asked with a knowing smile.

“Got a good spot?” I answered in return.

And off we went, two kids who might have been Tom and Huck from earlier days, and an older gentleman, two on bikes, one on sneakers, plying the waters of the Glendale Narrows.

Shortly, we came to Mario’s spot, which is one well known to the bait guys. In fact, we watched from the other side of a long island as one of them hooked up.

“Nice fish,” I shouted cupping my hands against the wind and background noise.

“That’s a minnow,” his friend called back. “You should see the big ones.”

Indeed.

As we wheeled and walked to a spot I knew, I told the boys to keep a sharp eye out for fish. Now that they’d seen a carp, they realized I wasn’t just telling them tall fish tales. And, sure enough, we spotted a bonnie golden bonefish as he pushed up a concrete step, the swift water parted by his muscular body and slashing tail.

“Whoa,” said the friend.

“Told ya,” the old guy answered back.

Then, I cast, cast, moved my indicator, cast, fooled with my weight, cast. Not a strike.

Soon, the boys got bored, which Mario said happened, but that it was worth it because of the thrill of the catch. They wanted to cross to the other side, so that we’d be closer to where the bait guys were hooking up. The thought of wading in that cold, questionable water didn’t thrill me, and we parted company, as they decided to stay on our side of the river, and go home for sandwiches.

“When you usually here?” Mario asked.

“Fridays,” I answered. The three of us shook hands, and then shook our heads in agreement, that we would meet again one of these Fridays, and, possibly, Mario would bring his dad along.

I fished out the day without a strike, yet as I walked back to the car, empty-handed, I thought about my two new friends. Fishing, after all, isn’t always about catching … If I’d seen them on the sidewalk, in the mall, or in a restaurant, I doubt we would have ever said a word. Yet here, in our defiled river, we three strangers became just a tad better acquainted than when we arrived.

See you on the river, Jim Burns