CARPTORIOUS: Paradigm shift

I have been having a really hard time with my fishing ever since the flood.  The flood was a major event and it changed everything overnight.  Water temperatures, clarity, flows and even river course changed and every pattern I have figured out for September / October went right out the window with it.   As a result this is a sketch of what happened to my incredibly awesome fishing year:

Earlier this week I was commiserating with a friend about my situation and he asked me why I didn't just go beat up on some pond carp.  You know, get the skunk off.  My answer was that ponds on the front range always shut down sometime in September.  I don't even remember when I established that paradigm or on what basis - but our discussion got me thinking and today I proved it wrong.  Very wrong!

I don't know how it is every day or on every pond, but on this beautiful late October day the carp at one of my favorite ponds were shallow and hungry!  Once I settled in on an egg-yarn head Egan's Head-Stand and a very very slow hook-set it was "I spot em I got em".  Its a good thing too because I was mere days from ending a streak of catching a carp in each of the last 22 months.