Monday, June 4, 2012

The Beaver Island Carp Box

Those that follow T.F.M. on the various streams of social media have already been watching as the Meat Locker has been coming together in preparation for the trip to Beaver Island off the coast of Michigan for Carp School later this week.

I'm getting excited about taking off on Thursday morning and having this fly box squared away is the first step in getting packed up and prepped for the trip. 


As the contents of the fly box were taking shape I realized that all but a few patterns have come from the stateside vises of specialty fly tiers.  How cool is that? 

I have nothing against flies being tied out of country but will say that there is something special about a fly that has been tied by someone you know and for a specific trip that you are going on.  The flies just seem to have more mojo wrapped into them.  

The list of fly tiers included in the Beaver Island Carp Box includes:

Tim Blair of Tim's Warm Water Flies
Michael Decoteau of RedSpotFly
Nick Granato of Fly Obsession
Thomas Harvey of Carolina Fly
Jean-Paul Lipton of Roughfisher.com
Michael Schmidt of Angler's Choice Flies
Jim Stuard of Fly Fish Ohio
S.S. Flies


The box is a mix of small but mostly large patterns.  The carp of Beaver Island have a preference for large meals which imitate their forage of crayfish and gobies and three inch long flies are not out of line.








There is a whole bunch of goodness in this fly box and I can't wait to drop a fly in front of a feeding carp on Beaver Island.  Thanks to each fly tier who I've bought, traded, or stole these patterns from to complete this fly box.  I greatly appreciate it. 

I've got just a few more days to wrap up a few things at the house, work, and finish getting packed to jump on a plane northward.

6 comments:

GFP said...

This year you better come home after catching a carp....smallmouth are great, but this is a freaking carp trip for goodness sakes! No pressure! Have fun!

Anonymous said...

I would be interested in what the names of these flies are Cameron. Maybe you could make a post that showed photos of each and their names?

I hope you have a great trip!

Paul

Spencer DT said...

I would like that as a trout box. Great looking stuff in there.

Caleb Reinhold said...

Very nice! Hope you guys get into them real heavy!

Chris said...

Everything is so orderly... my carp box looks like his carp box threw up in it...

Cameron Mortenson said...

GFP...I'll be there for about five days so I better touch at least one. HA...

Paul...I'll likely pull some favorites out of the box for more photos and fly recipes after the trip.

DT...thanks. I'm hoping there is a lot of mojo packed in this box.

Caleb...I do too. I hear it's already pretty unreal up there and the weather is looking great for later this week.

upacreek333...Truth told I'm just a little OCD when it comes to fly boxes. HA...