CARPTORIOUS: What Was I Thinking?

I took off for two hours today for some Carp on the fly at the local ponds.  Activity and aggression has been steadily decreasing since the explosion of feeding that happened at ice-off.  There are fewer shots and I have had to go way smaller on the presentation and way slower on the drop.

After about half an hour I found some Carp slumbering in the middle of this hot mess.  Why not?  I put on a un-weighted size 12 rubber-legged hairs ear, cast out past the mess and dragged through and around the maze until it dropped slowly past the carps left eye. 

As it turns out the worst possible thing happened.  The carp woke up, turned and immediatly engulfed the fly.  I set the hook and the next thing I know I am tangled around every single branch in the pile.  What was I thinking?
I did end up catching 2 17" Carp on un-weighted size 12 hairs ears off of a mud flat that I usually do terrible on.  There are always fish feeding there and I rarely catch them until recently.  I am hammering them now.  The small lightly weighted option with an ultra slow drop is proving very productive on passive grazing fish (fish mindlessly sleep-tailing through muck) and slumbering fish (fish just sitting there dead still in ultra shallow water).  Comments from Ty at Finewater got me thinking of trying this route and it has been paying off.  Thanks!

As far as the lakes go.  In the Denver Metro area there are mostly two kinds of smaller lakes.  Ground-water fed and urban runoff fed.  The ground-water fed generally hold bigger fish and more sight fishing but they appear to be deader than a doornail still.  The urban runoff type are collecting Carp on mudflats in or near the inlets - at least at the two I have scouted.  They are tough and acting oddly but they are there in numbers.  As far as the larger river and stream fed reservoirs go, in the three years I have been here I just haven't gotten around to fly fishing for Carp there yet.  I hope to start learning Chatfeild and Cherry Creek this spring.