Hello everyone.
Christmas Eve is full of surprises..
Merry Christmas to all of my readers and thank you for all of your kind messages; it would have been great to actually read them on the 25th but obviously without any connection that was not going to be possible. I am glad to say the nightmare situation has now been resolved and I now have a laptop that is virus free and works as it should. The fact my laptop had a virus was unknown to me as my Norton anti-virus failed to inform me (does make you wonder really?) and this was apparently corrupting the software that is responsible for the USB gates…all sounds double dutch to me but the repair bill of 144 Euros was easy for me to understand!
My laptop was not the only issue I suffered in the last week as I also purchased a new Italian sim card for my phone with an amount of credit. The shop however, decided to forget to add this credit to my phone, so not only did I have no internet; I also had no phone credit either!! You just couldn’t make it up really could you? The good news is I now have my laptop back, the internet works, and the phone shop, after realising their mistake, have finally topped up my phone – my life is complete again! I suppose I have made my own bed in all of this, as after writing the blog whilst I fish, I now find it very difficult to operate without an internet connection and after all – it is good to communicate (even on Christmas day)!
If you remember back to my last post I mentioned I was off to the lake to get set up. I drove the 30km from the Indyline HQ and arrived at a very chilly setting. The snow had been falling steadily for the past three days and the lake had a thick layer of fog resting over the surface. As I wandered along the perimeter of this particular section, it struck me how cold it was, and perhaps I was actually mad to even consider setting up in this weather. Well you know me by now and all I needed to do was to find a starting place.
I made a couple of calls and managed to get through to my friend Danilo. You may remember him from my Cassien stories and as it turned out, Danilo was actually set up at this very lake in the very place I wanted to fish from. It seemed my timing had been spot on as he only had a couple of days left of his three month session. Danilo is the Italian equivalent of me, in that he loves doing long sessions and it also seems Danilo is rather competitive. Wherever I fish for a long session, Danilo then has to fish at this venue for just a few days longer – to beat me! Danilo was actually at Cassien this year when I was fishing in Aviron. As I fished in 2008 through April, May and part of June and last year I had other plans, I offered Aviron to Danilo as I knew he intended to stay for the duration. What a session he went on to have, catching 15 carp over 20kg including six over 25!! He caught a couple of the real biggies I also caught and I will say this with an honest heart – it couldn’t of happened to a nicer guy.
Danilo : The Italian Big Carp Hunter!
Danilo drove round to meet me and I followed him back to the area of the lake he was fishing from. He had been in this spot for three weeks of his session and so far his biggest carp had been a 23.8kg common, which oddly enough was the same 23kg common I caught from here last year. I am not going to give the name of the lake away as it does not need brain science to work it out. The Italians amongst you will recognise pictures on my blog anyway, and for the UK audience if you read my ‘No Fixed Abode’ series, then you may remember the Italian lake I fished at last year where I caught a fat 50lb common.
I was in no rush to get set up and was prepared to wait for Danilo to finish his session in his own time. Tonight we would have a little get together meal and drink and it would be a chance to look at the Cassien pictures from his remarkeable season. Bernadette was his final capture at a shade over 30kg and this fish was caught a week after his French friend caught her, along with Chardonnay the big common during the same night. What a brace at Cassien. In fact both these anglers caught both of these fish last year, so it worked out nicely for both of them!
Danilo caught a small common at around 9pm which was a great boost for me. Coming from central France where most of the lakes seem to have slowed down, it was good to be at a lake where the carp still seemed to be catchable. I have to say I went to bed buzzing that night – Italy may have been a good choice.
Flash was loving the white stuff!!
Danilo had a spare bivvy set up so the dogs and I slept in this temporary home for the first night. In the morning the snow looked like it was on its way again, so I hastily put up two bivvies and helped Danilo pack away some of his equipment. He had one night left and my session would soon be beginning. By the afternoon the snow was well and truly dumping it down. It looked like the perfect Christmas card scene and my bivvies were slowly disappearing under the heavy white blanket. Now you might appreciate why I have my bivvy heater!!
The perfect Christmas card for carp anglers!
One snowflake ahead!!!
Morning arrived and no more carp were caught on Danilo’s final night. He was having obvious problems with his braid mainline freezing due to the cold and after I experienced similar problems last year at Cassien; it would be a simple choice to begin with – I would start fishing with mono as this tends to behave better in really cold weather. There was still no rush though and although the day still had a few hours of daylight left, I am not fishing in a competition and the rods would be placed the following day. I wanted to have a good look in the boat first using my echo sounder and there were certain features that I would be trying to identify; namely plateaus!
Ouch.....ah...No Problem!!
Danilo duly departed heading south to his home after his stranded car was freed. His vehicle was well and truly stuck and a caterpillar machine had to be summoned to help him out. It was not a smooth operation though and a broken side window and a limp wing mirror hanging off his vehicle was the end result!! I tried to explain to Danilo that if he had actually looked in his wing mirror he might have avoided the tree that ripped it off but being the supremely laid back character he is, he laughed and said “No problem!” The broken window incidentally is what happens when you loop a tow rope through the inside of your car from the side door out through the open boot and I don’t think this is a practice the AA would highly recommend! I waved off my friend trying hard to contain my laughter and got some food on the go. My boat was assembled in the water, my echo was ready to go in the morning and that was when the work would commence. I put up my final bivvy which makes three I will be using for my long sessions in Italy. I am not slumming it and each house will be used for specific jobs that I will cover another time!
Three homes for the long sessions...and as usual two dogs!
My bait for this session is Dynamite Baits Red Fish boilies. Fish baits seem to work well here and I also have some Mussel and Oyster boilies in reserve. Anyone who knows Dynamite Baits range will know that the Red Fish is based on the Fresh Fish Mussel and Oyster boilie but with the inclusion of robin red. I think for a winter bait it has to be a winner.
My bait for the session.
By midday the following day I had identified two plateaus and a couple of other likely looking spots that I liked the look of. After the snow of the previous two days, I was now being treated to some torrential rain and it chucked it down for the following 24 hours. I had a couple of enquiries from some white fish and it seemed my baits were too soft to fend off their attentions. I presumed this may be a problem and meshing the baits or using harder pop-ups would be the solution. Normally the first few days for me on a long session are trial and error and it is during this time that I try to work out very quickly what the obvious hurdles are that you are faced with. I always check my baits after the first 24 hours to see what is happening and my baits had all been nibbled significantly. Bottom baits it seems are working better than pop-ups at the moment on this lake, but that does not mean to say that a pop-up won’t work. If everyone is fishing with bottom baits then maybe a pop-up could bring results. To compensate I am now using both types of presentation and I am meshing my bottom baits using 26 and 20mm sizes. To prevent the hook catching in the mesh I am using stiff fluorocarbon hairs so it keeps the bait away from the hook point. Personally I am not really happy about the presentation of this method though as if you drop your rig in the edge quite often the boilie can sit awkwardly on the bottom meaning your hook can be high up in the water. I will cover this in more detail in the next few days and I am already thinking about adopting other techniques to make the presentation more discreet on the lakebed.
Due to the pelting rain on Christmas Eve I did little work in the boat! Two rods were in fact not put out as believe it or not, I am not stupid and I don’t see the point of getting soaked to the skin for no reason. If the fish were having it, as they were last year at Cassien at American Beach when it was pouring with rain, then I don’t mind getting drenched for a carp. I did and a 24.5kg mirror was my reward 20 minutes later, but on this occasion in Italy, the warmth of my bivvy was too much to tempt me to get soaked just to put two rods back out at long range!
Christmas Day came and went rather quickly. I got the rods sorted out by midday and decided pasta would be my Christmas dinner this year. It was great pasta so don’t feel sorry for me, and then in the afternoon a local guy called Gerry, accompanied by his father, popped down in the afternoon with a bottle of Spumante and a traditional Panettone cake for a little Christmas celebration. Now a carp would have been a nice present but I have a few more Christmas sessions planned and my time will surely come.
I will now shoot forwards to the present time. I have now identified another plateau which comes up from about 34ft to 24ft. The lake bed incidentally reaches depths of 40-50ft as you go further out and these plateaus are all situated quite close to the bank. The lake has plenty of reeds around the perimeter and as lakes go it is stunning in every sense of the word. I have a mountain backdrop and the night-time lights of the nearby town are a glistening addition to finish off a perfect setting.
Daniel with 'his' new lake record common of 23kg.
Now although my session has only just begun there is a good chance I will be moving swims in the next few days. There is a river that enters the lake which is an obvious hot spot and there are two Italian guys fishing there at the moment. In fact just this morning I photographed a beautiful dark common weighing a fraction over 50lbs caught by Daniel (not Danilo for once) and they are vacating this swim after the New Year. I like the area I am currently in but the dogs unfortunately don’t! The area is quite popular with people and there are a few houses behind me and everyone seems very paranoid about my two soft Dobermans. They have to be on a lead the whole time and if you have been following my blog, you will probably know that my dogs need their freedom to roam. I have put two tether hooks in the ground and attached the dogs to these via a strong elastic cord. The look on Flash’s face is enough to make your stomach turn. He does not understand why he is being restricted and to be honest I can’t blame him. They have probably been on leads for about 0.5% of their lives and I am not about to start chaining them up now. The new area I may move to you offers more water, more secluded space for my dogs to be dogs, and although it will be a Everest to move all of my equipment, I feel it is definitely the best choice. However, if a big carp turns up in the next 100 or so hours before the move it may throw a spanner in the works!
Funnily enough last night was the first night that I have felt really confident of a take. The temperature dropped early this morning, but yesterday evening, up until midnight, was fairly mild and there was lots of small fish activity – jumping, topping etc. I am fishing in a variety of depths from 10ft to 24ft, but I am going to make one change today and fish one rod right in the margins in a shallow depth of about 5ft, a couple of metres off the reeds.
The bait boats in Italy are massive!
I certainly have missed writing the blog and it is good to be back. Today’s blog is a little stop start but I hope it gives you a brief insight into what has been occurring since I arrived and started fishing. I said I would get everything sorted; I did, and now we just need a fine Italian carp to kick start the proceedings.
See you all tomorrow.
Jake and the dogs.
