Some of it depends on the rod and the drag setting of course. I don't see my backing often these days but I am also fishing for smaller carp in streams right now. The first carp that I caught was on a 5 weight and she was huge, I could barely move her and she broke me off. The second fish that I hooked I had the drag set very lightly and that fish wanted to go into the next county by running down stream. These days I am fishing mostly with my 7 weight unless I am targeting larger fish. Larger fish get the 8 wt as standard equipment and big fish in current the 9 wt comes out. Early on in my carp fishing adventures I fished with my 3 wt and there I used light tippet to match. I landed a 30" carp on 5X tippet with my 3 weight and it took 52 minutes. I said that I would never do that to me or the fish again. That fish reminded me of a rabbit in that it ran straight away in a larger river system. I could not chase that fish down the bank. I saw my backing and thought that I was going to loose my backing and fly line when the fish turned in a circle like a kicked up rabbit and returned to it's place where it wanted to be. The other thing that took so long is that I was by myself and needed to net that fish myself. Having someone else there to assist with the netting is always a grand thing.
If you want to learn more for free listen to these two men who wrote the book (literally, the title being: Carp on the Fly)
http://www.askaboutflyfishing.com/sp.../brad/brad.cfm
http://www.askaboutflyfishing.com/sp...y-reynolds.cfm
Both audio programs are on my Ipod and I have listened to both of them often.
Thee book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1555661866?...6DP429VBFZR0ZS&
I don't want to overload this post with too much info but if you want more carp links I have over 20 in my favorites.
While I am a TU member and attend meetings and fish for trout often, no brookie pulls like a brown freight train. Even if they are not your favorite targeted species like they are mine, they will give you experience with larger fish. If you are planning a trip to Alaska to fish for large salmon and you only fish for gills or smaller trout you are missing out on a great learning experience by fishing for carp.
This picture was shot 3 days ago on a small stream, actually a classified trout stream. The net is a Brodin Coho salmon net.
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