The Sessions - October 2018

Another poor Spanish trip cut short by weather

I signed off last month with my planned trip to Johnsons being cancelled due to weather and the change of plan saw me catching a few good Barbel to finish a month of mixed results.

4 October – River Trent

I’d fished an evening on the Ouse the previous evening without getting a touch, but it was from a swim I’d prepared with my reed cutter and will be re-visiting through the autumn.
I was at the end of a ten day stretch at work, they never get easier and fishing is a great place to unwind and let all the stress ease away. The weather had been settled with temps of 20-22 degrees, cloudy and feeling warm with night time temps of 10 degrees, perfect conditions so I couldn’t wait to get started.

I drove up after work arriving in the dark and got my second choice swim on the section, I knew it well so setting up in the dark was not a problem and two rigs baited with double 15mm pandemic were soon flicked out onto the spots followed by 20 freebies.

21:10 hours – I’d already had a small Barbel and on taking my hook out found a size 4 impaled in its mouth, now this fish was only 6plus so how on earth had it been lost if the hook link and main line were adequate??

The same rod went again and this one pulled back and put up a great fight before sliding in the net at 11-01.

I had three more bites through the night, all were high nines, give it a month or two and they will all be fat tens. I packed up in the morning to head home a get ready for my annual autumn trip to Spain chasing monsters.

7 October – River Segre, Mequinenza, Spain

I’ve been traveling to Europe since 1991 chasing big Cats and have achieved most of my targets catching some fantastic fish, the one remaining that keeps eluding me is a Catfish in excess of 100kg (220 pound). I’ve been close taking them myself to 206 pound, I’ve gloved fish to 222 pound for Colin, have seen fish to 243 pound caught by CatMaster clients and have been there when another three over 100kg have been caught by clients. To really rub salt into the wound I’ve had a friend drop onto my baited spot literally hours after I’ve gone home to England to land a 224 pound. I couldn’t get any closer, I know when to fish, the areas they like and I am totally committed I just needed the luck…….

I arrived on Saturday 6th to lovely warm weather at 27 degrees but a very low river and the fishing had been poor, on the plus side although not many fish were being caught, the big girls had started to show with four low 200’s caught in the previous two weeks.

To add to the problems we had a big one with bait, over the years we have experimented with pellets from all the major companies and without question the best Halibut pellets available are produced by BioMar. We have used them with great success for years and not being able to use them would really dent my confidence. CatMaster had not put an order in when stock was getting low and when they tried BioMar had no stock and their machine was broken. All the local shops had run out and the only option we had was Skretting or Coppens, neither of which are very good. Without boring readers with the science behind it all BioMar simply have better quality ingredients.

Luckily Colin and I had some 30mm BioMar up our sleeves that we could use on the hair and then we would use Skretting as feed, not ideal but better than no BioMar at all.
We did our normal slow start on the Sunday, driving round looking at swims, getting the tackle ready and generally catching up. Starting on a Sunday was good as the banks were clear and we got our chosen swim and set about setting up. I broke my golden rule I’ve stuck to for years in always fishing downstream if I win the toss of the coin, this time I chose upstream, anything to bring me that extra luck.

We got the rods ready on our go to rig, it’s nothing technical but it works so no need to change. 70kg Dyneema mainline, 100kg Dyneema hooklink to a size 8/0 Penetrator with a hair taking three pellets; this was fished on a bolt rig with a lead of 2 pound. The rigs are rowed out over the spots with an echo sounder to ensure it’s in the right place and three handfuls of pellet thrown over the top, simple but effective.
The trick is knowing the river and where the fish feed, this has taken us years to be consistent and is ever changing when the big floods wash all the silt away. It was clear this had happened again this year, the spring floods lasted months and had cleared the silt making it very hard to hold bottom in areas that have been productive before. This was made worse by the silkweed coming down in the flow. The spring floods had cleared all the silt and weed, then the really hot summer had made the silkweed flourish, I’d never seen so much in the 17 years I’ve been going there and it was causing problems….big time. We couldn’t hold bottom on the back shelf as the lead was being dragged of the spot so we had to fish all the rods on the near shelf.

By Tuesday afternoon the only two fish for the week had come to my rods, both just under 100 pound, that was with me and Colin and 18 CatMaster clients fishing. The fishing had been generally poor since there had been no BioMar available but with near perfect conditions the fish had to be there so why were they not feeding??

I decided to do some tests with the pellets and put one of each brand in a bucket of river water to see the break down level. The Skretting pellets look good and are extruded very tightly with very little crumbs coming of them, whereas BioMar tend to not be so tight. My thinking was that the Cats were eating but the Skretting was taking longer to be digested due to this and with the poor quality ingredients the urge to eat them was not so strong. After 24 hours in the bucket my suspicions were becoming reality as the Skretting were still very firm with just the outer part becoming soft, this convinced me my thinking was correct so we decided to put less bait in each bait up to see if this made a difference.
Later that evening we took a call from Dan, one of the guides, to tell us a client had caught his first ever Cat at 231, you couldn’t make it up…

11 October

The previous day had been a blank for everyone but I never get bored of waking up to an Ebro valley sunrise, they are all different but all stunning.

Things were that bad Colin resorted to dropping one of his baits my side of the swim, so I had to ensure I had the evidence on film.

As you would expect it didn’t take long for that rod to go over and he landed the biggest so far at 107. I had the next one in the middle of the afternoon at 136 and that was followed by another early evening. Colin then hooked a very big fish that after a long fight snagged him on the reed line, I went out in the boat to find the hook had pulled and the hook buried in a huge log.

With four bites in a day we were convinced the lighter baiting was working so continued with it. The Friday was blanks all round until Dan phoned again to say another first timer had caught 224, this was followed by another guiding company, Steve catching a huge monster at 243. Three over my target weight was amazing but reducing my chances as there are not many really big ones around, there are plenty over 200 but with that extra bit of weight there are not many.

Dan was fishing in a slack area and I was sure the fish were laying up there out of the flow digesting the Skretting pellet picking up a bait if it was close. The 224 was caught as they were reeling in, it simply grabbed it as it was going past.

13 October

The Saturday saw me taking another four fish to 129 and Colin having one at 189, the lighter baiting was definitely working as no one else was catching but the weather was closing in.
Hurricane Leslie was passing through Europe and storms were forecast and arrived through the night and rained most of the day, to make it worse my shelter was leaking badly soaking my sleeping bag and we knew what effect the rain would have on an already flooded river. We kept trying and I took another small Cat but conditions were getting worse.

It stopped raining Monday morning and I tried taping the shelter up, it was okish but when it started to rain again it was still getting through. The river started to rise, got really muddy and trees started coming down with loads of weed making fishing very hard. We were in the best flood swim and were struggling with most others all pulled of the river. Monday was a complete blank which wasn’t a surprise given the conditions. We had company all day from this Kingfisher and it was great watching as he was having far more success than us nailing loads of Bleak and Roach fry in the margin.

On the Tuesday it was not looking good with more storms forecast Thursday to Sunday, with the river pretty much unfishable I had a decision to make, stay and hope or fly home and head to the Trent. The 100kg would have to wait, I got a flight that evening……

This proved a great decision as the next day the levels were dropped by over 9 feet making most of the productive areas unfishable. We quite often have a bait in the area on the picture below.

17 October – River Trent

Julie picked me up the previous evening from Luton airport and the following morning I was home, car packed and up the A1 for the tidal.

It had been raining but was warm at 15 degrees and cloudy. I arrived mid-afternoon and got the spot I wanted for only the second time on this section and when I saw the river my confidence grew, it was high with colour but dropping and there was very few people about.

I got set up and two rigs baited with double 15mm pandemic and pva bags were soon cast out with no freebies for the start.
I set the swim up and got the kettle on and that’s when the picture above came through which vindicated my decision to come home, I sat there with a smile on my face hoping for a good end to my holiday.

17:10 hours – the first bite came in the day light and was a cracking fight in the extra water and a good start at 10-12

18:10 hours – it was still light when the same rod went again and this one was bigger at 12-10 and I was so pleased with the photo.

I had two more doubles in the night, this one at 11-11, a 10-03 and a high naughty 9.

18 October

Strangely I went seven hours without a bite and the next one was this fish at 10-00 at first light and again a lovely photo. I’d been putting in 20 pandemic after each fish and they were leaving loads of it on the mat, Barbel just love the stuff.

The sunrise shortly after was simply stunning and the Free Spirits framed it perfectly.

My plan was to move every day but after 5 doubles I decided to stay at least one more night. I was taken out by a right ignorant twat in a barge that just did not give a shit, oh how I’d love to have met him on the bank. As a result I didn’t fish through the day, as the boat traffic was busy and the rest didn’t do the swim any harm.

I was fishing again by teatime and hoping for a repeat of the previous night, the river level had dropped and the colour was coming out of the water but it still looked good.
The first bite was well into dark and went 9-14, then I had a crazy five minutes….

22:50 hours – the temp had dropped loads and it was very cold, getting close to freezing. The right hand rod went and it was a strange fight with the fish just plodding about but it felt heavy, then it popped up and I could see it was big. It saw the net and shot of but I was ready and let it take a bit of line before coaxing it back and into the net. I’ve said before, the harder you pull, the harder they fight, just relax and ease it to the net. This one was my season best at 14-15 and I was chuffed to bits. I’d just lifted it up for a photo when the other rod went over, the delkim was going mad but I couldn’t do anything but concentrate on the pics, looking back it was funny as it ended well, I got the fish back and picked the rod up to find it still on and another double at 10-05.

I expected more bites but that was it, it got very cold and foggy, the colour dropped out of the river and it went gin clear and in the next 24 hours I had one fish at 8plus. The third sunrise could not have been more different and I’d take some convincing that the large amounts of foam don’t have an impact, I’d welcome any thoughts from others on this.

But I wasn’t about to complain, I’d followed my instinct, flown home early and caught 7 doubles, brilliant stuff.

Until next month tight lines and be lucky

Julian Barnes