The Sessions - April 2018

My awful winter and spring continues…

So I signed off last month after finishing the show season promoting CatMaster Tours at the Big One in Farnborough and was looking forward to my planned spring Tench and Carp fishing, however the cold winter and poor spring weather had other ideas, along with my punishing work schedule. The first chance I had to get on the bank was April Fools Day…

1 April 2018 – Bridigo Lake

After days and days of rain we had a bit of a break with a cloudy day with light showers. I’d been keeping tabs for the Tench and they were not feeding on my target lake so I decided on a day’s Perching and final visit to Bridigo.

I’ve fished a different lake for Perch for the last four winters with rumours of 4’s caught from all of them, strangely the first Perch I’ve caught from each has been my biggest from each lake, and every time on my first visit!! With Bridigo it was this fish at 3-02 that gave me so much hope on my first trip only to be my biggest from the lake again. Maybe there is a lesson there I am not seeing…

I set up with two rods on floats, fishing in the margins, one on King Prawn and the other on Lobworm and fed red maggots, broken prawn and worm. I expected more regular action from Carp with the warmer temps but it was a very slow day. The ever reliable prawn didn’t get a touch but I picked up a swim trashing Carp and a Perch at 2-03 on the worm.

To add to my woes the bailiff came round for the first time this winter to tell me it’s one rod only from April Fool’s Day, it wasn’t a joke and I had to reel one in, #fareweatherbailiff

15 April 2018 – Fenland Lake

After another solid two weeks at work I got a free afternoon so headed over to my little lake in the fens, again there were stories of monster Perch but my best from there was this one at 3-00 but it did throw up a lot of 2’s so was good for a bit of sport.

The weather wasn’t great with cloudy spells and showers but I was set up for 15:30 hours and lowered two floats into the margins, one on Lobworm and the other King Prawn and started to feed red maggots. As usual the silvers were there on mass and smashing the maggots, the worm kept getting picked up by small fish and dragged around but they weren’t big enough to get hooked. After a couple of hours I changed both onto prawn. I had two Tench and some large pound plus Rudd but no Perch. I had the drop shot rod so put a worm on and walked the worm in most swims round the lake, I had lots of takes but they were Roach with some of the bigger pound plus ones getting hooked but again no Perch which is so unusual for the lake.

23 April 2018 – Rio Segre, Mequinenza, Spain

My usual planned spring Carping trip to Spain had arrived, this trip was a little different as I was only staying one week instead of two and would be driving back after picking up a car.

During a my Catting trip in the winter I’d been telling Colin about some of my disasters getting stuck on the Trent in winter and that I needed a four wheel drive, after a bit of thought he said he’d give me one but I’d have to pick it up, what a result so plans were made to drive it home following my spring trip.

I love my Spanish Carping especially when fishing from a boat as I had on my last few trips, the boat gives me the option to move regularly without to much hassle of breaking down camp. However this year the region had experienced horrendous rain fall causing mass flooding, some of the pictures I’d seen were the worst I’d seen on the river there.

Now I know from experience that it doesn’t fish well in flood, the Cats and Carp do not like the sediment in the water and tend not to fed, you have to look for slack clearer areas to find fish that may pick a bait up so I knew before leaving home this would be a tough trip.

When I arrived on the Sat evening the Segre was a mess, raging through, full of colour, with trees and all sorts coming down in the flow, a drive up to the dam saw much the same on the Ebro with the dam having three gates open, I’ve never seen that in my 18 years visiting the region.

With the conditions so poor I spent the Sunday sorting my gear and the car. I have a full set up over in Spain which is so handy as I can fly over with just extra rig bits if I need them. Once I was sorted I went for a drive to look at both rivers and places where I thought fish might be holding up, it looked very bleak as the river condition had got worse if anything.



On the plus side it was warm, sunny and in the mid-twenties which made a pleasant change from England. I didn’t see much at all apart from small fish in a shallow area so I planned to start in areas I’d done well in before and see what happened.
So on the Monday morning after a few boat problems I set of for a large reed lined shallow are out of the main flow. The boat fishing is becoming more popular and when I got to the area there was two boats already there so I did the decent thing and went further down to another of my favourite spots and dropped the mud weights.

Ridgemonkey had sent me a lot of rig material and I’d taken some to Spain with me to try. I set up on the rig I used last spring but incorporated the Ridgemonkey gear. I set up with the RM-Tec braided shock leader to tackle the snags and tree stumps, and my combi-rig of a 6” fluorocarbon boom, a link loop and a small piece of RM-Tec soft braid to a size 6 Curved Shank hook.

The session started well when 40 mins in I had a take and landed my first Carp of the trip at 20-06, now I don’t tend to photograph 20’s in Spain but instinct was telling me do it so I did and then slipped it back expecting lots more.

However despite five moves it was the only take of the day and worryingly I wasn’t seeing fish showing which is very unusual there.

24 April 2018

I went out after breakfast and motored up to the area I wanted to start in to find it free so dropped the mud weights and flicked the rigs out and sat back enjoying the sun and bird life. I was fishing behind an island and tight to the reeds which is normally a banker, I call it my thirty spot so imagine my dismay when a hour or so later I hear SPLOSH!! I turned round to find a boat with four idiots aboard who had anchored no more than 20 feet from me, you couldn’t make it up, and then they cast past my boat to the reed line, unbelievable!

I hadn’t seen a fish and was thinking of moving so made plenty of noise while doing so. I tried a number of spots and this was a familiar site all day.

Right on last knockings I had a Common at 19plus to save a blank day. We had 21 clients over and they were struggling with only one Catfish caught between them.

26 April 2018

The Wednesday had been a complete blank despite a lot of effort so on the Thursday I went up to the dam area as I’d found fish showing in the margins. The margin area was 15 feet before dropping of to 45 feet so I targeted the shallower water, fish were showing but were not feeding as I didn’t get a take. It was an impressive place to fish as the dam is huge when you sit under it in a small boat and the thought of all that water above you, you wouldn’t stand a chance if it burst and nor would the village.

During the evening I found a large group of fish in a shallow bay on the Ebro so drifted in slowly and got myself set, I thought it would be like shelling peas but how wrong was I when they started spawning big time with no interest in feeding. Just to cap off the day I broke the tip off one of my Scope rods, that is the second time which I’m afraid is not good.

27 April 2018

With the fish spawning and the river in such bad shape I decided not to fish anymore and spent the morning cleaning the car ready for the trip home, I’m looking forward to taking this up the Trent as I should be able to sleep in it which will save taking so much gear.

The rest of the day was spent out bird watching, we saw loads and it was a great day. The highlight being a Black Kite on the track eating a Hare, I took video and a lot of photos, disappointingly they were not as good as I would like but I did get one reasonable shot, but a new camera could be my next purchase.

So not a great trip to Spain, probably my worst in 18 years but you can’t win them all and that’s what keeps it interesting.

Until next month tight lines and be lucky

Julian Barnes