Overview

The Great Carpholio is a carp fly built by someone who has to fool pressured fish, not a trout nymph pressed into carp duty. It came out of summers on a stretch of the Missouri River where the carp see enough anglers to turn genuinely wary by August, and it has since taken more fish there than the rest of the box combined. The design answers the two things that beat most carp flies: it has to arrive quietly, and it has to look alive the moment it lands.

The slender profile drops through the water column quickly, so the fly reaches a feeding fish before that fish moves off the spot, and the soft materials keep working on the smallest strip or on current alone. Tied on a jig hook, it rides point up, which does two useful things at once: it takes a solid hold in a tough mouth, and it stops the fly fouling on the bottom where carp actually feed. Fish it to sighted fish on flats and shallow margins, lead the fish rather than casting at it, and let the fly settle into the feeding lane. Tied here in size 4.Read More +