The Chironomid Solution

Rarely will you hear midges or chironomids brought up in a conversation about carp fishing. It is well known among carp fishermen that these fish are willing to eat just about anything. This is why they can survive almost anywhere and be hard to take advantage of. I prefer to use carp flies that mimic larger prey, such as crayfish and leeches. This choice in fly selection has to do a lot with my approach to carp fishing. I like to cover as much water as possible, hunting the more active and hungry fish. I love sight casting to a carp that is more likely to turn and pounce on a fly. But, as Mick Jagger says at least twice a day on the classic vinyl station, you can’t always get what ya want. So, the situation we ran into out at one of my local carp lakes called for some innovative strategy. We were seeing tons of fish near the surface and getting our fair share of shots at cruising carp, but most of them were congregating in large packs just in the outer limits of our casting range. I could get a fly out to them, but it would usually spook them all. As a last resort, we rigged a dry and dropper set-up with a Yankee Buzzer chironomid pupa as the bottom fly. It worked within seconds. The fight, however, lasted much longer. Should have used heavier tippet…