Some post-Thanksgiving river fishing

After a month away from fishing freshwater, I contacted my friend preast to see if he wanted to join me on the San Gabriel river on Saturday morning to pursue some carp on the fly. He said he may be a little late.

The morning turned out to be beautiful. It was still and crisp but it was really foggy. It was so foggy I could barely make out the outline of the 18-wheeler that was parked across the two lanes of the road! I got around it safely though.

I got to the low water crossing around 8am and paddled upstream. It was a gorgeous morning on the water with the cool air, fog, calm water and the changing fall colors in the trees lining the river.

Fishing was slow, by the time preast showed around mid-morning, I had only caught two carp in the shallow limestone flats. So preast and I returned to a pool downstream where I have usually had better luck. preast indicated he never has much luck there. As it turned out, that would change.

I ended up catching one more carp at the pool and preast immediately hooked up with one that was mudding near him. He kept fishing and caught a couple more nice ones including the one he's holding in the photo here (sorry, but all I had was my camera phone which explains the low quality). I really need to ask for a better digital camera for Christmas that I can use for fishing trips.

So, we kept fishing and continued downstream with no additional luck and called it a day. We discussed getting together again in December to fish the Guadalupe river for rainbow trout which is a fish I have very little experience going after but enjoyed catching last year.