If you like saltwater flats fishing for bonefish, permit, or redfish, you'll love the Great Lakes flats "golden ghosts." The flats are just as beautiful, much more accessible, and they resemble saltwater flats. There are more fish, no crowds, and the fish are as hard to fool and land as the big saltwater flats fish.

As we fish these flats, my wife Emily and I constantly remark how much it feels like we are bonefishing. In the diverse Great Lakes fisheries of salmon, steelhead, trout, char, pike, walleye, perch, sunfish, bass, and alewife, the carp has found its own unique niche, evolving into a superb gamefish. In my experiences no better carp fishery exists, although there are many across the country and all provide unexplored opportunities for fly fishers.

Great Lakes carp have found a niche that does not encroach on other gamefish. Vast areas of shallow shorelines are nearly devoid, except for carp, of daytime foraging fish and fishermen. The carp average between 8 and 16 pounds, and many reach 30 pounds or more. The shorelines and flats are scarce on vegetation, so the carp forage primarily on shellfish, aquatic insects, leeches, crayfish, worms, and small minnows. This menu makes them a gold mine for fly fishers.

I was introduced to this fishery by George von Schrader, the author of Carp Are Game Fish, a splendid book about his lifetime of research and exploration of carp fishing around the Great Lakes. I became friends with George when he lived in Mountain Home, Arkansas, where we canoed and fished for smallmouth together in our favorite Ozark stream, Crooked Creek. For years George invited me to join him on his annual two-month summer carp-fishing vacation on Wisconsin's Door Peninsula. My first two-day trip with George exceeded all my expectations.

Great Lakes carp have found a niche that does not encroach on other gamefish. Vast areas of shallow shorelines are nearly devoid, except for carp, of daytime foraging fish and fishermen. The carp average between 8 and 16 pounds, and many reach 30 pounds or more. The shorelines and flats are scarce on vegetation, so the carp forage primarily on shellfish, aquatic insects, leeches, crayfish, worms, and small minnows. This menu makes them a gold mine for fly fishers.

I was introduced to this fishery by George von Schrader, the author of Carp Are Game Fish, a splendid book about his lifetime of research and exploration of carp fishing around the Great Lakes. I became friends with George when he lived in Mountain Home, Arkansas, where we canoed and fished for smallmouth together in our favorite Ozark stream, Crooked Creek. For years George invited me to join him on his annual two-month summer carp-fishing vacation on Wisconsin's Door Peninsula. My first two-day trip with George exceeded all my expectations.

George poles his Boston Whaler and wades over his favorite "golden ghosts" flats, so excited that he ignores nearby fishing for pike, salmon, steelhead, and smallmouth. That's easy to understand if you fish with him. He opened my eyes to how special carp are. I once asked him why he wanted to let the world discover and invade his beloved fishing. He smiled and said he wanted carp to finally gain the respect they were due. I can agree with that.

The large carp that live on the limestone flats of Lake Michigan travel in pods (above) as they feed. Keeping a low profile and making accurate casts are two keys to successful carp fishing.

From June to September, the fish move each morning onto the flats in pods or schools, scattering into singles, pairs, or small pods to search for nymphs, leeches, and crayfish in from one to four feet of clear water. They cruise and feed upwind, like bonefish feeding into a tidal flow.

We approach and present the fly to them as though they are tailing or cruising bonefish or permit. When a carp eats the fly and you hook up, it's into your backing so fast that you are taken off-guard. The powerful fish rocket down the long flats or occasionally disappears over the horizon into the deep blue water at the edge of the flats.

They never stop, and 50, 100, 200, 300 yards of backing melts off the reel as you run, pole, or motor after them. After two or three backing-stretching runs, they subject you to another 15 to 30 minutes of close-in Jack Cravalle-like fighting.

After my second trip with George, I realized that I'd seen the end of my backing more in one week than in all the rest of my life's fishing experience. Often while I fought a big one, it joined several other fish and they cruised over the horizon and down the coast with my line and backing. What a place!