After a couple of weeks discussing tactics and a quick scouting trip last week James arrived for our winter session up at Caspe.
We picked Caspe as Chipirana and Escatron were both virtually unfishable due to the amount of water entering the Ebro system. Caspe widens out and I found a nice swim where both the main river and a flooded bay were accessible.
Truck packed we set off up stream to the chosen swim. On arrival we quickly located the old river bed with the dingy and fish finder and looked for any features worth putting a bait on. 80 yards or so was the river bed 38 feet of water but no features it was perfectly flat every where apart from a point 300 plus yards away which was the entrance too the flooded bay. 2 markers placed, pellets and boilies were used to bait up with boilies used as hook baits so they would last the night.
Night soon came no runs but fish were showing but in no particular areas so as dawn broke we were both up early to see if we could pin them down.
I went out in the dingy to see if I could see anything on the fish finder, as I was over our baited area my rod tip pulls over and James is in on my rod. Quickly back to the bank rod passed over as agreed and I end up landing a pristine 34lb 4oz common.
Good start and really great confidence boost, we re-baited placing our baits using the dingy feeding again a mixture of boilies and pellets. 2pm and I’m in again not a big fish at 13lb 13oz but a fish. Nothing else happened during the day but a flat calm stunning evening and the 2 earlier fish gave us hope of a great session as there were 3 nights still ahead of us.
We woke to a cold and frosty morning with no action, we re baited but the day and night passed with not a bleep. Time to make a decision and we both agreed we needed to give them some bait, 15kg of boilies and pellets we spread over the marked area, baits placed, time to sit back and wait and see what happens. The evening past with no action and as the bottom was flat and clean we decided to leave the rigs out. Night came and the weather took a turn, wind and very cold rain directed straight at us I zipped the oval front up whilst a sleepy James knew nothing about it until 4am when his Delkim screamed into life. He was up and on it very quickly as 60 hours had passed without a bleep. After the fish shock it’s head to start with it eventually realised it was hooked and soon was peeling line off the reel. I didn’t know that in fact James was in automatic mode and still half asleep (how many times have we done that!!!) our plan was to walk up the bank and play the fish up high (so as to lift the line free of the old river bank) but when caught out you don’t always do it and you guessed it with the fish taking line James was cut off !!! Quick re rig and back out leaving the reactions to what had happened till the morning.
Morning came with the alarms staying silent, I sent one rod out over 300 yards to the point just to try something different, James kept his on the baited area but with just the day and night to go and the wind picking up we were running out of time. Well by 10am the waves were getting bigger and the wind was straight at us. In 4 days we had seen it all 22 degrees sunshine, frost, flat calm, cloud, rain now a very strong wind so strong we couldn’t get out on the dingy. Casting into the wind ment our rigs would drop short but that’s all we could do. Still nothing our lines were so bowed the leads were probably being dragged about but at 4 pm I had a couple of bleeps from the rod still on the baited area, the tip dipped and I was into a fish. Not the fish we were after but another 13lb common, but a fish and we had the rest of the afternoon and night to come. Evening came and the wind was even stronger no chance to get the baits on our markers which in fact had disappeared!! We sat out our last night rueing he’s lost fish and with us hoping the wind would drop just a bit but it wasn’t to be. We woke to a flat calm!! ( typical) with carp topping as they had the previous days one here one there, no real pattern, but we had to pack up so that was that.
So after catching a 30 so early in the session it turned out to be biggest, very disappointing as we worked so hard but what fish were out there just didn’t want to get their heads down and with the weather all over the place we were up against it.
Until next time Paul
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