Lipton's Carp Crack: An IGFA World Record catching fly pattern

Meredith McCord recently swept all seven IGFA tippet class world records for smallmouth buffalo, under the guidance of Captain Kirk Kirkland. That's a pretty remarkable feat, and congratulations are definitely in order! Meredith is quite the accomplished angler with several IGFA records under her belt, and Capt Kirk is the foremost authority on guiding for gar. He has ammassed over 100 IGFA world records for all gar species. He's even guided Jeremy Wade of River Monsters fame for alligator gar.

Capt Kirk Kirkland and I took the sweep of all 7 tippet IGFA world records (from a 9.5lbs fish on 2lbs on up to the 20lbs class) for the Smallmouth Buffalo. Caught on the Trinity River near the Livingston Dam all on the "Carp Crack" fly. Orange was the most popular. (The brown and black that worked as well, stripping very long and slow) #igfaworldrecords #kirkkirkland @smithoptics @abelreels @romaboots @patagoniaflyfish

A photo posted by Meredith McCord (@meredithmccord) on Jan 31, 2015 at 6:37am PST

I love fishing for buffalo, and it's always great when buffalo and other native roughfish species get some positive press and publicity. They certainly deserve respect! It was a pleasure to see Meredith's records show up on my social media news feeds and to observe all of the positive feedback she recieved for her catches. It wasn't until I read the photo descriptions and comments that I noticed something that came as a complete surprise, her record catches were caught using a Carp Crack fly! I messaged Capt Kirk to verify that the fly Meredith mentioned using was indeed my pattern and not another pattern of the same name. After seeing a photo I sent him of my pattern, he confirmed that the pattern supplied Meredith with was indeed my Carp Crack pattern. Wow, I was truly surprised!


I have another item to add the growing list of life accomplishments, and perhaps one of the more flattering (and unexpected) ones, I designed a world record catching fly pattern. Ha! Time to add that one to the résumé.


A big congratulations to Meredith McCord and Capt. Kirk Kirkland for your accomplishments, thank you for using my fly pattern, and thank you for letting me share your photos and story!