CONCRETE JUNGLE

Fall is a beautiful season, when leaves change color from green to yellow and yellow to red, when temperature keeps dropping and when animals start to get ready for winter. Although, change in the season is visible all around us, I have decided to enjoy this amazing part of the year and spend it outside, fishing. With lower temperatures of the air, temperature of the water drops and fish starts to feed more vigorously in the anticipation of upcoming winter months. It was a beautiful Sunday, with temperature a little over 60 degrees, clear sky and mild wind. For this trip I have decided to get away from beauty of the fall and go right in the heart of the city, the concrete jungle. Canals, buildings, roads, and bridges all covered in melancholy of autumn; gray, cold, with no life.

Being a Sunday, I planned a short morning session to early afternoon. It is funny how much stuff we, carp anglers carry with us to our sessions, even if these sessions last only few hours. Being prepared is the key, because you never know what you might need. Surrounded by a concrete structures covered in graffiti’s I drop my lines in the canal. Canal with a hot water discharge always keeps fish nearby and it is a great food source area for hungry carp.

My lines went almost vertically towards the water along the canal bank I was sitting on. Simple rigs with couple KD variations, nothing sophisticated. US carp fishing, for the most part, doesn’t require creative rigs or camouflage, simple and basic setups will catch fish. For this session I have decided to use two different flavors from K-1 Baits range of flavored corn: fruity peach and garlic. The reason for that was to observe the attraction to two different flavors in the very small area.

It didn’t take long for the first fish to land on the mat, nice teen common went directly for the garlic flavored corn. Few minutes after that another, again on garlic. Just for the fun of it, I have decided to change this up and put garlic in the swim where fruity peach was and vice versa. The end result did not change, another fish was caught on garlic and non on fruity peach.

Gray, cold, with no life concrete jungle became a testing ground which only emphasized that not all flavors work in all conditions. It is important to play with flavors as you come to the swim to determine what the fish is targeting that day. I had sessions in the past in the same spot; one day one flavor worked and the next day something else worked. It might not be the spot you are fishing in, it might not be the rigs you are using, but simply, it might be the flavor. Great lesson learned.