Modern glass vs Keepit dam carp Day 1

Tuesday morning good mate Peter Hanrahan and myself headed to Keepit dam to see if we could catch some of the strong carp we had heard of up there. We arrived at twelve o'clock after a five hour run with Pete's boat in tow to a dam that was now at 97 percent after being at 7 percent and it had not been at this lever for 6 years so there was heaps of debris around the edges as well as lots of algae and only 200 mm of clarity into the water, we new straight away fishing was going to be tough.

After a quick lunch we rigged up our rods Pete went with his Stalker 7 weight while I was keen to put a bend in my Vale Creek built Seele 886 rapid that had been built for a while and features in our reviews section but I had not yet fished. I was running a 406 fly line with cutthroat big bug leader tippet was 6 pound maxima ultra green, yes that is light for big carp water but I no my glass rods have great shock absorbing tippet protection so all should be good. We launched the boat loaded our gear and we where off in search of some big strong carp, on bank one we both only seen 1 carp each and it was very shallow and had lots of grass and rubbish in the water so we moved across the lake to the next bay to see what we could find. When we came into the bay it looked very muddy for about 4 meters out and both of us thought it must be wave action that had caused this mud cloud so Pete headed around the point to clearer water and I took my time to check out the bay more carefully and it was not long before I realised that it was mud from lots of carp muddying in the bay. Even being able to see fish it was not going to be easy going with the mud, weed and decaying grass it was very tough going even frustrating at times.
I did manage two from this bay both of them giving me a quick introduction to my backing the biggest went 10.8 lb on Pete's scales. Around the point I go to see how Pete was going and the water was clearer but Pete was having a hard time as well only landing one nice fat carp, I seen one as we where walking back to the boat and after covering it a couple of times I was hooked up solid to another solid Keepit dam carp, so that was 3 fish for close to 30 pound of carp all with 6 lb tippet so yes my glass rods do give great tippet protection. We where both tied so back to camp for a good shower and tea was in order and a beer or two, then a big sleep day two was going to be big.

Fish number 1 on my Seele built buy Vale Creek Rodworks 10.8 lbs