Monotheism simply lacks enough deities to curse and I’m contemplating a switch to Norse or Greek “Old Timey” polytheism.

Cursing is just one of many conversion advantages; you can junk the Solunar tables and paw through Crow guts to see tomorrow’s fishing forecast, there’s meaning to a bird flying past with a worm in its beak or taking a newspaper in the brisket from a kid hurtling past on a 10 speed.

They’re signs …

With so few practitioners and this being the heyday of Political Correctness, everyone will be back pedaling desperately not to give affront – and every sign points to your going fishing,  because you’re the fellow interpreting them.

My conversion occurred Sunday, I’d busted out to settle scores with a school of monstrous Carp I’d spotted last week. I had a fly box stuffed with sizes, weights, and colors, and having pitted wits with the wily “Golden Salmon” before – I’d resolved to use a systematic approach to rejection, akin to asking all the pretty girls to the Prom knowing the outcome is preordained.

Assuming 100 fish in the school, 5 swings with each candidate should yield enough curled lips and involuntary shudders to move to the next prototype or concoction.

I slunk away from the car while the Paintball Irregulars eyed my ample posterior. I’d left pride and elitism at home, as I’d stuffed a pocket full of patented “KreamKornKillers”, outlawed in 17 states and the bane of all Cyprinids.

 

I hustled past the Pikeminnow, ignored the massive Trico spinner fall, was oblivious to partially clad supermodel’s that orbit the homeless encampment, and stomped my way past the Bank of Detroit to the magic Carp pool.

Deserted like normal, and a cloud of egg laying Trico’s drenching the far bank with an appreciative horde of small Bass munching undisturbed on the slow, infirm, and spent.

The school of Carp was still there, milling in a slow circle. No eating, no laggards, just a continuous stream of large fish like pedestrians disgorging from a subway escalator.

I tried: Small, Medium, large. Small, medium, and large, beaded. Small, medium, and large – weighted and no bead. I tried red, yellow, green, olive, moss, black, navy, grannom green, puce, paisley, gingham, and elderberry. Next was variegated black and yellow, tinsel equipped, turned up eye, turned down nose, sproat, kirbed, thick, thin, and maudlin. I asked the fat girls, the girls with cleft palates, the freshmen with disfiguring skin growths and their little sister, negatory – no dance.

I tried upstream presentations, downstream drifts, jerked, fried, and drifted. I bottom rolled, bunny-hopped, and pantomimed. Nada.

I’d offended no God – nor was I paying for misspent youth, or hellish and sinister past life – this is Carp fishing as I know it, obscenely difficult – and counter to everything I’ve read in print.

I discovered the advantages of Polytheism as I worked around the bend to the center of the pool, and saw the corpses and burned out wagon train…

 

… and here I’d brought a rod and reel to a gunfight. A broadhead arrow makes a hell of an exit wound, and this “angler” had started lining them up by size until he got tired of touching them, then left them where they lay.

His Kung Fu was better’n mine.

The roar of the ATV from across the creek had me looking in that direction, and while the rider was still 65 yards away the Carp moved in response to his presence, coming enmasse to my side of the creek. A bit touchy still from the Bow orgy of yesterday.

I figure this is a sign. Fish milling in a circle is “response to predator” and means there’ll be no fish caught under any circumstances.

I finished my conversion to polytheism in a vocal manner, resolved little other than the “CoachSoccer “was more adept an angler than myself. Although I read better than he does;  Grass Carp is zero-kill in this watershed … I’d add “zero catch” but that’s just the sour grapes talking.

“Notch” improved my spirits a bit, he’s a Sacramento Sucker that came out of the water and tail walked through the finicky carp, it’s part of the beauty of coarse fish – many have the attributes of their noble cousins, yet so few fish for them they’re never recorded.

 

Early Spring displays the war wounds, tossed against unyielding object is my guess, an unlikely location for an Osprey’s talons or other predator, his gill plate neatly notched and healing.

Tossing a #20 Trico spinner with a Skagit head and a 4X tippet is perverse humor, but steady feeding Bass added much needed salve to the wound.

The fly lands south of the line tip and you have to drag about 30 feet of the running line to get the fly out ahead of the rest  – I managed to hook a couple fish, but they tossed the tiny fly after a brief tussle.

Kinda like the way them “gals” treated me, minus the tussle.