FISH TURN THEIR NOSES UP WHEN WATERS ARE CHILLY.

Byline: Eric Sharp Detroit Free Press 

The high sun in Northern Michigan offers great visibility, and through my polarized sunglasses I can see pod after pod of carp cruising along the beach into a 15-knot wind.

Stiff breezes are something anglers must learn to handle if they want to fish Great Lakes carp. It's just like saltwater-flats fishing - there's usually 10-knots-plus of wind, and it seems to be always in your face.

Rigging up an eight-weight fly rod, I scramble into the water just as a pod of a half-dozen fish comes by. They ignore a No. 4 wooly bugger wet fly until the leaders see my legs and make a wide circle around. But 40 feet behind is a single who hasn't seen me yet.

The black fly drops six feet in front of his nose. Before I can strip in enough line to make the fly hop, I see the leader twitch and raise the rod tip. There is a heavy weight on the end, followed by a couple of hard jolts as the carp jerks its head to shake the hook, then the fish heads toward the Lower Peninsula pulling 120 feet of line with it.

It takes about 10 minutes to bring the fish in next to me, weigh it on a hand scale (17-1/2 pounds) and turn it loose. It's pale-colored as carp go, a sort of greeny-gold the likes of which you see on weathered copper.

Polarized glasses are essential - and teaching newcomers to spot fish is one of the keys to this game, as it is in fishing for bones and redfish on saltwater flats. The fish are simply torpedo-shaped black lumps with no sign of tail movement or color until they get within 30 feet. Sometimes there's a flash of reddish-gold or coppery green when a fish turns sideways and the sun glints off its scales.

Passerby John Higbee of South Bend, Ind., wants to know what to use for carp. My fly box is filled mostly with brown, olive and black wooly buggers, stone fly nymphs and crayfish imitations. Spin fishermen can use small, dark bucktails and rubber-tailed jigs, or use flies by putting a casting weight on the line a foot above them.

I like a nine-foot leader with 6- to 8-pound tippet for fly fishing and 6- to 8-pound monofilament for rods. The fight takes place in open water, without anything to snag the line.

The first fish hit so quickly I figure it would take only minutes to dazzle Higbee again with my carping skills. Talk about pride going before a fall. Two hours later at least 300 big carp have cruised by in pods of two to 20 and have ignored every fly laid in front of them.

Those same lures caught carp wholesale last summer. But in this solar-challenged spring, the difference is water temperature. Last year, good catches didn't begin until the water was in the 70s. Most days I waded in shorts and sneakers. Lake Michigan is still cold enough to feel the chill of the water through waders and a pair of sweat pants.

Two cruisers coming off a distant dark spot appear more promising. Instead of motoring straight ahead like a bus on a highway, they wander left and right and stop, a sign they're picking insects off the bottom.

A No. 6 black stone fly nymph, slightly weighted, drops just far enough in front of the leader to be at eye level when he's 50 feet away. I twitch the fly past the carp's nose. When I feel two answering twitches, I raise the rod and complete the hook.

``That's a big fish!'' Higbee shouts from shore. ``I'm going to bring my rod when we come back next month and see if I can catch a couple.''

I hope I'll be able to join him. Give these waters in northern Lakes Michigan and Huron another week or so of sunshine and 30-fish days won't be unheard of.