Over the last decade or so, the fly fishing community's perception of carp has changed dramatically. Carp, which was not long ago widely seen as a species of "trash fish" only chased by fishermen wielding spinning rods with mish-mashed balls of corn meal and table scraps tied to the end of their line has reached fairly wide acceptance as one of the finest game fish available to anglers. Add in the fact that carp are more widely distributed across the US and the globe than perhaps any other species of game fish, offering a gross abundance of angling opportunities, and it is easy to understand why so many anglers are looking to get started chasing carp.

But where to start? Especially for the trout fisherman, pursuing carp is considerably different than heading out in search of the normal quarry. Fishing for carp is much more akin to fishing for bonefish and other flats species (which has fairly earned carp the nickname "freshwater bonefish"), so if you are accustomed to that kind of fishing you are going to be more prepared for chasing carp. Carp, in fact, can be radically different from trout in and it is important to understand the differences if you intend to target them, as applying tactics that you have learned while trout fishing typically won’t work well and will often lead to poor results.

“Luckily, though, there are still a few guys around who will look you straight in the eye and say, eloquently and to the point, ‘It’s been too goddamned hot for too long and the river has gone off.’” — John Gierach, Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing

I cut my fly fishing teeth on John Gierach, and when he first published those words back in 1990, it all seemed innocent enough. Sure, ’88 was a hot son-of-a-gun, and the legendary waters around Yellowstone were beaten up by the heat in ways that nobody back then ever anticipated. Still, it seemed like an anomaly. Weather does crazy stuff. Some years are wet, others are dry; some are hot, some are cold, and some, on those occasions when the fishing gods happen to smile down from on high, are classic ‘Goldilocks' just right. That’s how it always worked, and nobody I knew back in the early ‘90s ever considered that things might end up differently.

Fast forward to 2014, though, and any mention of extreme weather starts to sound ominous.

That’s Gierach again, from his book All Fishermen Are Liars, and he frames our current reality in language that’s awfully hard to ignore. So what is the truth about climate change? What is the “new normal” - and how will it impact us as anglers?