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Romania- The story of a recovering paradise (Frank Warwick)

Romania- The story of a recovering paradise

To my eternal regret for various reasons I chose to avoid the fishing that was on offer at Robert Raduta’s Lake Sarvlesti in Romania until I fished there in the 2002 World Carp Championship s.  I then realised what a fool I had been in missing out on some of the most spectacular fishing and scenery available anywhere in the world.

I suppose in the past I had been slightly put off by the logistic of getting me and all my tackle down to Heathrow airport, leaving my vehicle there, flying to Romania, transport to the lake etc.  I am not the best at scaling my tackle down for weight limits and it all served to put me off but when I actually got my act together and finally tried it, I need not have worried as it was nowhere near as bad as I had imagined, easy really!

Despite being in the same swim for five days in the World Championships and not getting to see and explore the whole lake, I very quickly fell in love with the special atmosphere that prevails at the lake it’s like nothing else I have ever come across before, so I made my mind up there and then that I would venture back as soon as possible.

My return trip was the following year in early October. I talked my old mate Roger Seaton into accompanying me for a weeklong stay. Roger is a widely travelled man and has literally been everywhere on his varied travels as an accomplished mountaineer, deep sea diver and ex Para. He was going to be hard to impress.  Like me he could not believe how peaceful and unspoilt the place was and instantly found the whole package very much to his liking. We had a wonderful time and Roger went as far as saying that it was one of the best weeks of his life! We had some good fish up to 43lbs 8oz but no monsters, but the week went so quickly we kind of only scratched the surface. Other anglers on that occasion had carp to 50lb so that only served to wet our appetites more.

Moving on to the following year I booked for two weeks in October and was disturbed to hear reports of problems with Lake Raduta in the May period, apparently there had been some fish mortalities and a fair proportion of the carp had perished, I felt sick. The last thing I ever wanted to hear was now a reality and my new found paradise was being snatched away before my eyes. With a very heavy heart it was sickening to hear the various reports and not really knowing whether they were true or exaggerated. As anglers tend to do, some of the ,more experienced big fish hunters who had the good times at Raduta were quick to paint a grim picture and were soon to abandon the place and write it off as a lost cause. I was not so sure and felt I had to go out there as planned and find out for myself. After all things can appear bad initially but may in fact be nowhere near as bad as first imagined. At least that was my way of thinking! One by one the lads who were previously keen to go out to the lake made their excuses and fell by the wayside until I was left on my own, although Rob Hughes still had a party of anglers who were, like myself, going out there and keeping an open mind. After the initial fish mortalities in the May, the lake fished badly, although the various small parties that gave it a go had still caught the odd fish to mid 50’s. With less anglers fishing than usual and less fish to go for it was always going to be hard to get a good picture of what was exactly left and indeed whether any of the lakes bigger known carp had survived. I have to say at this point that I also felt very sorry for Robert Raduta and his people that work at the lake and the hotel, as they had been very nice to me. Their livelihood could be at jeopardy if the problem was indeed very serious. On the other hand why would only the big fish have succumbed and not everything else? No virus or disease could be big fish selective so if plenty of fish had survived why would quite a few of the big ones not still be alive and well? I was going to try and see for myself.

I flew out to the lake as planned in October with the weather hot and sunny for the time of year. I heard a few reports from the lake and it was encouraging the few people that were venturing out were catching reasonable numbers of carp with the odd bigger fish putting in an appearance. In the back of my mind I had this vision of one of the monster surviving the fish kill and thriving on the extra natural food available because of the reduced competition for food and revelling in the reduced angling pressure. I was not going to make the same mistake as the first time and only realise what I had been missing out on after other buggers appeared in the ‘mags’ with those monsters. Not this time. I intend to be the one who shows the way and proves the doubters wrong with a true monster. That was and still is my plan!
Previously upon arrival at the hotel it had been a hive of activity wit anglers from all over Europe coming and going, enjoying a drink, swapping stories and enjoying the truly unique atmosphere of the lake. It was strange going to the same place only a year on and it being so quiet! It was a shame and a bit sad really.

I guess it was a bit of a task made harder by the red-hot weather that Romania had been having for the time of year. For myself the fishing was slow and unpredictable but for some of the guy’s things went very well with good numbers of carp caught. In fact I was very encouraged by some of the results. Things were certainly not as bad as some people had made out although as I said the lake proved to be very hit and miss as to whether you were on them or not. One definite bonus side effect of the fish kill, unfortunate in one way, was the grass carp that had previously something of a nuisance had virtually vanished. Before, they were a novelty at first until they continually picked up rigs meant for the big stuff and after a while they did get a bit much. Now we were catching only Mirror and Common Carp with very few ‘Grassies’ and the grass carp we did catch were much bigger than average, which I noted with interest.

That trip fizzled out for me with more of a whimper than a bang and only served to strengthen my resolve to keep going. The signs were there that a good proportion of the stock was intact, or I should say, enough to encourage me to return even though collectively the lads and I had not connected with any of the lakes bigger survivors. I had the distinct feeling that the fish were going through a period of recovery from a rough time and were still out of sorts.

Even though my exploratory trip had thrown up more questions than answers and only a handful of carp I had seen enough, some of the guys had also caught enough to prompt a return trip. I felt the unseasonable hot weather had not helped matters with the Romanian workers telling me the summer had been ridiculously hot, and they could not remember a hotter summer ever.

In various publications around Europe I now and again saw favourable reports of successful trips that had yielded carp up to mid 50’s despite the recurring theme that very few people were bothering to go to the lake anymore. I am sure in my mind that if large groups of decent anglers were still going to the lake that the bigger survivors would put in an appearance, but with such a vast amount of water to go at, the small groups that go now and again are only scratching the surface.

I decided to go again in mid October of 2005 and after speaking to my old friend Jason Cann he agreed to accompany me on the trip. I went to great pains to impress on Jason that the tackle allowance is a fairly generous 50kgs on Tarom Airways but feared the worst as Jason’s idea of travelling light is not what a normal angler would call light, it is usually enough to fill a small truck.

Despite me running through check lists of bare essentials with Mr Cann several times, he still managed to appear at Heathrow’s terminal 2 with a veritable mountain of gear that took my bloody breath away, including 2 giant zip-up shoulder bags that contained mountains of clothes. I commented that extra bait instead of clothes might have been more appropriate! He laughed and said he would happily pay for any excess baggage. “You are 8kgs over sir”, the ground hostess pronounced as Jason’s kit buckled the scales “and its £10 per kilo sir” she added. That tended to focus Jason’s casual approach somewhat, we then had to make our way to Lufthansa’s desk to pay the excess, so we came up with a little plan! Our bags had been weighed and checked so whilst Jason kept an eye out I went and got 30kgs of extra bait out of my mate Del Smith’s car who had dropped me off and discretely stuffed it into every available nook and cranny in our luggage. That made paying the excess much more bearable even though we crapped ourselves in case they re-weighed our bags again. They even reduced the price by half when I complained and told them I am a personal friend of the Prime Minister of Romania- I guess they daren’t take the risk in case I was.

After an interesting flight we were amused to see the heavy-handed baggage handler grab the massively overloaded bait-stuffed luggage to try and throw it on the truck in a slightly aggressive manner. The look on his face was hysterical and I swear we saw his testicles fall out of his overalls as a hernia popped chucking the monster weight around.

Outside the airport one of Roberts’s staff met us in a big transit van and very soon we were meandering down the rough tracks to the lake. I am sure Jason wondered where the hell we were going to as the look on his face said it all! Some of the villages we passed through were like looking into the past with people riding around on wooden horse drawn carts and living in buildings made out of wood with straw roofs-amazing.  Very soon we arrived at Roberts very impressive modern hotel with its neatly manicured lawns and pretty gardens looking for all the world like it would be more at home in Miami or the Florida Keys. We arrived a couple of days after the other 8 anglers and my old friend Packo, the fishery manger, said the guys had been catching well, he also said the lake was perhaps 10feet above its normal level as there had been plenty of rain over the last few weeks causing massive flooding over much of Romania.

We went out in a speed boat with Packo and ran the echo sounder over several swims. In the end Jason and I fancied the same area over a big plateau near a shallower snaggy bay. It looked simply perfect and gave us many options with the nearest anglers to us about half a mile away. The sheer scale of the place blew Jason away and we laughed about how lucky we were as we readied our gear and set up camp.

Roberts’s staff put up our big canvas South African tents, which are very comfy and warm. Bedchairs, cooker, table and chairs, plus all the necessary utensils are provided. With 4 rods each set up we set about finding our own hotspots with the boat and took a great deal of time and care doing this as it is important to start the session the right way, building up the swim as the session progresses. We used half filled water bottles for markers plus ‘H’ blocks types anchored with big rocks or bricks that we found, as rough weather can often dislodge leads of up to 8ozs.

We both had a gut feeling we were going to need plenty of bait as things looked almost too good to be true.
For hook-links I opted to use the trusted ‘snowman’ setup with a Source 18mm bottom bait topped and balanced with one of my own Dynamite pink Squid and Octopus 16mm pop-ups. Hooks were size 4 Korda Longshanks on a shrink tube line aligner and blow back setup, my favourite in most situations. Hook-lengths were going to be Drennans new 25lb Striptease and if problems were encountered I would use 45lb Quicksilver. I opted straight away to use Korda 8oz Big Gripper leads, 30lb Daiwa Sensor shock tubing leader and my favourite 15lb GR60 mainline. Jasons setup was very similar except he chose to use a heavy braided shock leader. Some of his hook-baits were specials that he had hand rolled. The size of them made me smile with some being larger than a golf ball. Those I just had to see in use.
We fished the rods in pairs on long bank-sticks so that we could easily bring the boat into the bank in the dark without wiping rods out, which is easy when fishing 3 or 4 rods.
Jason had given the bait some thought and had been busy buying tins of Tuna fish in sunflower oil, our favourite additive, and had squeezed the oil from about £80 worth of tuna into a large 2ltr bottle, expensive but certainly a massive edge. We liberally dosed up about 20kgs of mixed boilies and knew that the oil would attract the carp in from 100’s of yards away if not further.

Instead of baiting a small tight area we opted to spread the bait over a larger area on each of our chosen features in an effort to try and hold larger numbers of carp for longer. After about an hour and a half we had all 8 rods done and dusted, enabling us to now relax and anticipate that first run. We retired to our bivvy’s early that evening as the tiredness from the travelling finally caught up with us. I knew from previous trips that most activity would come in the night and I was woken by a screaming run on my most fancied spot. For a little, bleary eyed, I did not know where I was. I simply stood there under a cloudless star filled sky with my rod keeled and the spool ticking away as an unseen lump tried to empty my spool. Very soon the pressure told on the carp and I slipped the net under a 26lb common. As the night wore on Jason and I realised we were not going to get much sleep as a steady procession of carp, all commons, came our way up to around mid 30’s and I have to say they all looked fabulous, bristling with health. Jason was thrilled that our swim choice and baiting strategy was so obviously good. I reasoned that with a bit of look we might tangle with one of the big target fish sooner than anticipated. Some of Roberts’s blokes came around in the morning bringing us breakfast and gave us a rundown on how the other anglers were faring. By all accounts most were catching steadily and that we had made a very good start indeed. Later that day I had a slow take that resulted in my rod being slammed over and line being take in an almost irresistible way. Knowing or sensing that this was a very good fish I said to Jason that we ought to take the boat and try to subdue the fish from above as we followed it. He readily agreed by which time the wind had got up substantially and was quite strong to say the least. All the way through the scrap I was on edge. For some reason this fish continually wanted to hug the bottom but finally my Century FS rod, which has a fair bit of power subdued it and Jason and I went a bit wide eyed when an absolute creature of a common broke the surface. For the entire world it looked as long as a coffee table top. Mentally I was prematurely thinking how big this fish was going to look when I held it up for the camera.

As the fish was nearing being beaten, to my horror I noticed it had picked up another one of my lines and was tethering the fish on the surface. I could see that the snagged-up line was running straight down my hook-length and actually running across the carp’s mouth. I said to Jason that prompt action was required and I was going to grab this rogue line and bite through it. Before the words had left my mouth, almost in slow motion the other line pinged the rig out of the commons mouth and the fish frustratingly sank from view and drifted off giving a tantalizing glimpse of its large flank as it did so. Normally I’m quite calm when I occasionally lose a fish, this time I was uncharacteristically frustrated and went mad! After sulking all afternoon I put the loss to the back of my mind and reasoned that it was early days into the trip and I might just get another chance at a whacker. Jason said he was going to get radical and try to fish selectively for very big carp using his massive hook-baits in 4-bait ‘greedy pig’ rig setups- oh my giddy aunt Fanny, you should have seen the finished rigs-monstrous. We were quite excited when one Jason’s ‘monster only rigs’ went off in the early hours of the following morning. Despite our high hopes a relatively miniscule common of around 20lb was the culprit. How the hell it had managed to get 2x40mm baits, 2x20mm baits plus a size 4 long-shank hook in its mouth is one of life’s great mysteries. However, the next greedy customer was a 41lber if memory serves me correctly. Quite often in the daytime one of the local shepherds from the nearby Gypsy village, Christian, would drop by and see how things were going, despite us not speaking a word of each other’s language we held a bizarre sort of communication. You could tell Christian had had a very harsh life as despite him only being in his early 30’s he looked a lot older with hi leather-like weather beaten skin. We often gave him the odd bit of fruit, English chocolate, cigarettes and occasional shot of vodka during his visits and his beaming smile said just how much of a treat it all was. One day he turned up with a special gift of a kilo of goat’s cheese his family had made, proving how people who don’t have much are very generous and friendly for sure.

As we introduced more bait and got the swims really cooking the runs came thick and fast both day and night. In fact sheer fatigue from receiving so much action occasionally prevented us from repositioning rods in the dark. We had on several occasions 2 runs at the same, time, which made things interesting with only 2 of us there and 8 rods out.

Some of the sunrises and sunsets were breathtaking on Sarvlesti, the real name of the lake and quite often Pelicans and flocks of Spoonbills came into our swim. Despite it being mid October the weather was warm in the daytime and we actually came home with a nice suntan apiece. Temperatures at night were similar to England with occasional light frosts but nothing serious. As the session wore on we noticed the size of the carp got steadily bigger as we were sure the baiting pyramid started to happen with upper 30’s putting in appearances and the odd welcome 40 turning up. During the whole session we felt it was just a matter of time before we hit the jackpot with one of the lakes surviving monsters. We knew they were there as on several occasions fish crashed out that took our breath away. Even at great distances some of them looked massive.

I don’t know what you are looking for from a fishing holiday but from my personal point of view if you have never tried Lake Raduta then you have missed out on a very special experience. I know for a fact that each of my angling pals and myself will be returning each year for the rest of our lives I suspect. It’s unique that nothing compares to its feel good factor. We love the place.

Should you fancy a trip to Lake Raduta, Rob Hughes from Angling International run two trips each year at the moment, one in late May and one in early October. My Friend Jason Colenso oversees the trips from Rob Hughes and Jason filmed some footage of the October trip I have just described.

If you would like to view the DVD of that trip to wet your appetite you can have a copy to view prior to perhaps booking. Trips can be tailored to your time available i.e. 1 week, 10 days or two weeks. Prices are very affordable and I cannot fully describe in words just how special the place is!

Frank Warwick