Carp:
It's so hot the rivers in Montana are closed to fishing most of the
day, and you really
don't want to mess with the poor fish even when it's open....they're
all half dead as it is.

So, some guys I know have rigged
a driftboat up like a flats boat, with a polling platform
in back, They've been chasing carp on various
hot and shallow irrigation impoundments.

You pole around looking for muds, where the fish are digging for
worms or crawdads. You sneak up on them and cast a woolly bugger.
Like bonefish they're real spooky and hard to catch. Unlike bonefish
10-15
pound fish are common. And they take you into the backing
every time.

The Chinese and Germans like to eat carp. I wonder if there
is a way to prepare them that works. I know I want to catch
a few. I might even try eating one.....once anyway.

Catfish:
Talking about carp reminds me of the last time it
got this hot. It was almost 20 years ago, in 1988,
the year of the big fires in Yellowstone Park.

The trout fishing wasn't much good anywhere that
year--by the end of the summer anyway. So a buddy
and I floated the Big Horn River from
Hardin all the way out to the Yellowstone.
It took four days of paddling and three nights
camping on the river. We caught big carp, a few
Sauger (wild walleyes), Goldeneye (fresh water shad)
and big catfish. We used spinning rods and night
crawlers most of the time. But we also brought
a slab of fresh, soft-white, un-smoked pork skin
we got from the butcher.

We rigged strips of that up like rubber worms, with
a big split shot, and cast them with 8 weight fly rods.

We caught channel catfish to 4-5 pounds on the fly rod.
Now that was a blast. They like to hang out in the
fast riffly water just upstream from deep swirling holes.

It could be the 15 pound cats are the the bottom of
those deep holes. But the 3-4 pounders seem to like the riffles,
where they're a lot easier to get at.

Might have to try that again soon too. The confluence pool,
where the Big Horn dumps into the Yellowstone, is supposed
to hold some of the biggest channel cats in Montana.