UK CARP FISHING IN SPAIN ARTICLE

Something for the weekend ?

A change is as good as the rest for Iain Macmillan, Who jets off to Spain for Big-Carp action with Fatanglingtours. Iain put together a six page spread which hit the front page of the UK CARP Magazine. To read all about it click the links below to download the actual articles from the UK CARP magazine. Or alternatively, a bit further down you can read the whole of the text article further down.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND ?

A change is as good as a rest for Iain Macmillan, who jets off to Spain for big-carp action far from the spodding crowd

It was back in May, during the ‘Weekend with the Stars’ event at Chilham Mill, that I met Matt from FAT Angling Tours. He filled my head with tails of uncaught whackers from the banks of the mighty Orellana in western Spain, but what set my heart racing was the fact that the banks of this lake – a dammed former river – were empty for mile after mile.

That was it – wheels were put in motion for a long weekend trip out there in early August to sample the delights of this untapped region of Spain, and who better to keep me in order than the sane, sober and sorted Rich Wilby ?

Matt sorted everything his end. All we had to do was to book a flight with easyJet to Madrid., where he would be waiting to take us on the three-hour journey through the Spanish mountains to the massive expanse of water that is the mighty Orellana.

On arrival we dumped our bags in the apartment and headed over to the local bar to catch up with what had been going down on the bank over the last few days. Basically, Matt had been baiting an area off the church island where the course of the old river ran very close to the bank. This would make further baiting-up easy, and the fact that we could more or less underarm flick the rigs out would make the tactical side of things a walk in the park – that was the plan.

While Rich Wilby and I sipped an ice-cold beer (well, actually we went mad and bought one apiece). Matt told us that the fish were absolutely ripping up the bottom, crashing and rolling along the full length of the area he’d been baiting up.

Next morning we were champing at the bit, but eventually Matt collected us from our apartment and we headed off to the bank. It took us an hour or so to get the rods and equipment – which Mat supplies – all set up. We had a few new rigs tied up but I kept things simple with a 251b hooklink and a size 6 long shank.

Matt told us that the old riverbed was about 60ft deep, but that the shelf in front of it went down to just 25ft. This was where we wanted to be. Rich was fishing over a rather rocky area, so naturally his leads were going down with a rather severe ‘donk’. Mine were landing with a much more carpy ‘thud’, indicating that I was fishing over a lovely soft area, probably sand or silt. Rich’s we later concluded, were landing in or around the rocks on the bottom.

The rods had been out for only an hour or so when one of mine absolutely ripped off. I was on it in a flash, and straight away had to give line at an alarming rate. The fish had made it into the deeper riverbed, where it was doing its best to shed the hook. At one stage I was practically flat-rodded. Soon, though, I gained the upper hand and the golden common was bundled into the waiting net – only a low twenty, but what a fight !

“If that’s what a twenty feels like, I’d really like to latch into a forty”, I thought.

More bites came at intervals, but they were all from the middle rod fished well into the soft ground. I moved my right-hand rod to a small area only about a rodlength out, but an obvious patrol route for the carp as they moved along the marginal shelf in search of food.

All the while I was getting steady action, Rich was pulling his hair out. He re-cast in an attempt to locate some softer ground and found an area to his right that was a better lie for him – my swim!

What happened next will stay with me for a long time. Rich waited and waited, then all of a sudden he got two bites at once. The first one, towards the rocks, cut him off, but he landed the other fish right from under my nose. Ha!

Things were getting a bit hectic, and I’ll be the first to admit that this session was becoming hard work - not because of the fish, we could cope with them, but because it was now close on 40 degrees.

We made sure we were drinking plenty of water and slapping on Factor 30 to protect us from the midday sun, and it was after the second suncream session that Rich had another flyer. This time, though, it was a fish from his own swim that fought like an absolute warrior. It surfaced some 30yds from the bank. Sure enough, the lead clip had done its job well and dumped the lead on the take, so I was able to net the fish first time.

The scales read 261b on the nose and we couldn’t have been happier. It was good to get a nice one under our belts.Congratulations over, Matt took to the water again to bait up, only this time he had a rather large bucket of maize with him. Only 15 minutes later fish after fish were leaping out all over the place and Rich and I were practically glued to our rods, convinced that a take was just seconds away.

When a bite came it was one of my rods that was practically pulled in. Rich rolled around laughing as I did my little running dance over the rocks towards the ripping rod, and again it was practically torn from my grasp. The fight was very similar to Rich’s, and when a long golden bar of common carp surfaced, gasping for air, we got it into the net as soon as we could. This one went 261b 12oz, but it must have been nearly 3ft long.

I’d only just returned it when the rod down to my right began bouncing in the rest. I, too, was managing to dump the lead on the take, so the fish was able to run before I lifted into it. This ensured that it ran out into open water and away from the snag-ridden, rocky shelf. The fight was dogged, rather than inspiring, and we weren’t at all surprised to see another good fish roll into the net. We thought this wasthe Spanish thirty that we so desired for the feature, so chunky did it look compared to the earlier fish, but I gasped in shock when Rich announced that it was another 26! We couldn’t get it out of our heads that by rights it should have weighed 41b more.

We couldn’t manage anything bigger but no complaints. The Orellana is stuffed with carp, and it would take only a minute for a shoal of thirties and forties to move through the swim. Not knowing what the next fish will be is all part of the excitement.

We decided to pack up early on the Orellana, but only so we could move on to the equally beautiful and untapped Sierra Brava. We would have just one morning here before heading off to catch our flight, but in that time we were hopeful of getting among some of the large denizens, particularly the scaly mirrors known as Royals.

We were both casting to a sunken forest, so clutches were screwed up tight. At 11.55am, just five minutes before we had to leave, Rich’s left-hand rod bent round savagely and as he held on tight his 251b hooklink snapped like cotton. That had been a much better fish.

And so reluctantly, it was back to Madrid airport to catch our ‘cheap’ flight back to Luton. We’d enjoyed a simple, no-hassle long eekend in the sun away from the hordes of bivvies lining the banks in the UK.

FAT Angling Tours is now taking bookings for four-day and week-long trips, and has very kindly offer UKCarp readers the chance for four anglers to head out for the price of three.

To contact FAT visit the website www.fatangling.co.uk or call 0121 286 8971 / 0034 676 926 895.

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