The Urban Carp - LA's Finest Fishing?

Guide Steve Blair with a LA River Mud Marlin 2011

The Urban Carp is LA's newest fly fishing guide service hunting down LA's Mud Marlin.

Mud Marlin in the parlance of the fly fishing community are in fact carp, big fat, 10lb carp.

Make no bones about it the LA river is a cesspool, it's one of the most degraded habitats in all of the western United States and yet one enterprising visionary and guide, Steve Blair, is now LA's finest hunter of the catch and release Mud Marlin.

And his new website is open for business.

A lot of folks outside of the fly fishing community will not understand why anyone would want to fish these toxic leviathans of the deep, but to understand that you also have to understand the geography of LA.

For an avid fly fisherman in LA the closest trout waters are 10 hours away, in traffic, and it's usually a three to four day schlep to get into the Eastern Sierra where the waters are pure and the trout big fat and happy.

If you can sneak out of work early in downtown LA and bag a 10-15lb  Mud Marlin it takes the edge off that "Jones for the outdoors" that all fly fishermen suffer from.

All laughing aside the Urban Carp is a serious endeavor lead by a top class guide into a river system that is in many ways as wild as anything you'll find in the Eastern Sierra.

Leave your spray cans at home and go have some Mud Marlin fun!

Los Angeles Where the "Mud Marlins" Are

The L.A River is a conservation nightmare, a running cesspool of concrete, plastic bags, the odd corpse, and for one enterprising fly fishing fanatic - The Valhalla of Giant Fish.

Known to the fly fishing community as "Mud Marlin," giant carp (Cyprinus carpio) are said to inhabit the toxic depths of the L.A River and Steve Blair is their nemesis.

With fly fishing skills honed on the Eastern Sierra in the hunt for trophy trout, Steve has discovered where the Mud Marlin are found and over the past year what imitations these leviathans of the toxic stew which runs through downtown L.A will hit on.

It's a remarkable adaptation as this urban fly hunter turns his sights on the least understood and shattered eco system in America, to haul out 20-30 pound fish.

Of course these fish are quickly put back.

Here's to the real trailblazers within the fly fishing world, those who's desire to catch big fish can be found in the most unlikely places, like the L.A River.

When not on the hunt for Mud Marlin in L.A you can find Steve on National Geographic playing with giant squids and at the Long Beach Aquarium.

At Large with Nat Geo - Scott Cassel, Richard Theiss, and Steve Blair

Three of the smartest natural history guys on television right now tackle the Humbolt Squids of Baja on National Geograhic Television this week:

Steve Blair A.Q Pacific-Monster Hunter

A few weeks ago we got a call from Steve Blair. He was going to upstate New York to fly fish some "Monster Browns" on a river ominously called "Ifwetoldyawehavetokillya".

Steve's a personal favorite of ours here at Underwater Thrills and we have been with him on a quite a few fish related adventures over the years. Here's Steve's email to us this morning:

I would like to announce the arrival of my new "baby". He was delivered on a small river in upstate New York at a chunky 13lbs 8oz and 29 inches long.

Father is doing fine.He did have a few other siblings the same day in the 8-11lb class.

Sent gifts of egg patterns and large rubberlegs (rust and brown) if you would like.

Cheers,
Steve

Giant Squid Diving-Steve Blairs Report

From Steve Blair this week a quick albeit amazing Giant Squid report from the Sea of Cortez:

Patric,

I wanted to tell you about my dive trip down to Santa Rosalia, Baja last week. I had an interesting trip! As you know I was going down there to dive with the giant Humboldt squid and with our infamous friend Scott Cassell. Scott was finishing up a Discovery Channel film shoot when I arrived and we had 3 days of diving to look forward to.

The idea was to get into the water once at dusk and then again after dark to observe and film the squid’s natural feeding behaviors at night. Because the squid can be pretty dangerous we were wearing full chain mail suits and helmets for protection against bites and the ring teeth in their 1200 suction cups and eight arms.

Here’s the fun part – we were diving at night in blue water with only 10 foot visibility hanging on a steel cable 40-50 feet deep under the panga and suspended over the 3000 foot deep abyss below. At night with the limited visibility you looked down below your fins into the inky black that only monsters come out of! We had no lights except for two small LED lights on a cable suspended 15 below the boat.

To bring the squid in close (and that’s not difficult) we had the fisherman on the boat cut up chunks of squid they were catching and throw them overboard. It was eerie to watch the white chunks of flesh flutter down all around us and just before you lose sight of them in the dark around you “something” would quickly appear and the chunk of flesh would be gone in a blur of arms.

The squid are very fast and in the limited visibility they move in and out of sight really quickly. These were some pretty large ones at about 6 feet total length. I was watching one attack Scott in the head and seeing others move around near him when one hit me in the side of the head as well. When they attack they hit with force and the arms grab and hold while the beak rips into you. Luckily I was wearing a helmet and this one didn’t try to bite me.

In the dark with hundreds of squid darting all around eating the chum raining down it can get pretty intimidating – like walking through a bar where everyone is throwing punches at you or is about to! Wild stuff to say the least. And I thought cage diving with great whites was cool.

Wanna go diving with us?