Gary Allen's Regency Angling

Archive for August, 2010

Just renewed all my mainlines ready for the most productive time of the year for Catfishing. The Ebro and the Segre starting to really fish well now. From now until mid November we see the most 200lb fish being landed.

Once again, another great trip with Regency Angling. Gary was on top form, as usual. See you soon, John.

April 2010  – Carp Session……..

Having visited Gary many times we were all packed and ready to go, armed with our rig boxes, 4kg of boillies each and a few clothes. A volcano in Iceland had erupted a few days ago, and was now preventing any aircraft from flying in UK airspace, so with everyone saying ‘oh it will all blow over within a few days, your flight will be fine’, we made no further arrangements.

On the Monday however, it looked very unlikely we would be flying anywhere, so with our flight booked for Tuesday morning, it was time to put plan B into operation. This consisted of a Euro tunnel booking and digging out some old maps of France from trips a few years before we discovered the magic of Mequinenza, Spain. With the flight officially cancelled at 3pm, we now had 12 hours to pack as much gear, food and all the other stuff you just can’t pack with a 20KG limit on Easyjet.

Somehow we managed to fill up the car with enough tinned food and drink to supply a small army, along with all the boillies we had stored in our freezers and plenty of good ole English sausages and bacon for Gazza.

Gary had said the best route was to go via Reims, down past Lyon and across the border towards Barcelona on the East coast. After plugging the destination into the Sat Nav, going directly down the center of France via Paris we ended up near Toulouse which is very central in the extreme south, and having to go 200 miles out of way to pick up the main route to Barcelona or would have meant travelling 300 miles through the Pyrenees, not highly recommended ! The morale here, always listen to your guide !!!

On arriving at Gary’s, 15 hours later, he met us with a fantastic bacon and egg hot baguette and cold drinks, now that’s what I call service! He explained that all the people who had been stranded by the Volcano ash had left that morning via a mini bus that he had organised, and it appeared that we would be the only English in the village for a while as no one else had been keen enough to drive. He also told us about several spots he had been baiting up ready for us, which again he always does to ensure his guests have somewhere to start and so we were keen to get started early the next morning.

Having fished on the river ebro and river segre  many times before, we knew that the best times for carp would very likely be from day break till about midday, then from around 5pm till late evening, so we arranged to fish from the boat as usual and split the days in two, coming in to join Gary for lunch each day and have a shower etc, before going out for the evening session.

The first morning produced about a dozen fish to upper 20, with plenty of Gary’s particle mix which he cooks up on site being applied before we left for lunch. Following a great lunch, the boat was launched for the evening session where upon anchoring the boat we found the carp had started to spawn in the reeds behind where we had baited up. This was not part of the plan, but the swim yielded around another dozen good average size fish, so we baited it heavily again ready for the next morning.

This then formed the baiting plan for the rest of the week, with the fish getting bigger and bigger as the week on, even though they appeared to be getting heavily into spawning mode. By the 3^rd day the best fish was a cracking 42lb common, with not a mark on it except for the small hook hole left by my good self. Gary had ‘popped’ out that evening to fish the other baited area, and managed to net himself a 34.4lb Mirror carp, a rare beast for these parts, except for Gary who seems to catch them regularly!

The next day consisted of much ribbing, mainly aimed at myself who was the only one at the dinner table who hadn’t caught a 50; am I bovered ! With 5 40’s under my belt in last couple of years, I was happy enough.

The next day, Gavin my fishing buddy landed a clossal 12lb mirror carp, great!! Now I am the only one to have not caught a 50 or a mirror…… I wonder, could I possibly kill 2 birds with one stone and shut them up ?

Sadly, NO, but my 6^th 40 at 42.8lb did give me bragging rights for the week at least, so the banter wasn’t ALL directed at me.

As I mentioned earlier, Gavin and myself have fished the area many times and always stayed with Gary who has put us on fish and given us great advice, we even nipped out for an evening catfish fishing, which we don’t consider ourselves particularly good at, and with Gary’s advice and location managed to land ourselves a 60lb+ cat to cap the session off.

The total amount of carp landed for the week was over a hundred, with 2 forties and an average of upper 20, plus the bonus catfish. With 2 weeks in June already booked for a serious go at the cats, things were looking good for 2010 !

Rob Leather