General

A dream comes true in Mequinenza

After a succesful Wembley show we went straight to Mequinenza on the sunday, at least that was the plan. It turned out to be a disaster. When we arrived at Stansted Airport we heard that the flight was cancelled for at least 4 or 5 days!!!! The only option was to find some alternative by ourselves. Ryan Air did not do anything to help us out.

We managed to get a flight from Manchester to Barcelona Airport for the next day so we had to travel from London all night by bus to arrive in the morning in Manchester very tired without any sleep. From there the journey went on smoothly and in the afternoon we finally arrived in Barcelona. Here we met up with Bart Vandenplas who was so kind to bring a big part of our gear and bait (thanks for that mate). From here we had to hire a car and drive to Mequinenza in two hours. I was so tired and had so much pain in my back that I had to get some sleep while the rest of the guys started fishing in front of the house we'd hired.

Our group was formed by some of the Dynamite Team members, first of all Ronny de Groote who invited me last year for this trip but we managed to get it sorted this year. Also from Holland John Caeyers and his Belgium mate Peter Kuppens with his wife joined us and as said before Bart Vandenplas.

We had hired a small villa near the river Ebro with a beautifull view and perfect for catfishing and carpfishing. My goal for this trip was to catch my first catfish. Because of my backproblems I started fishing on the Wednesday. In the meantime the other boys were already fishing and had caught a few. I started fishing in front of the house but no action, on Thursday I was invited by Tom from Bavarian Guiding Service who prebaited a big area with our Halibut pellets, which turned out to be very good day which I will never forget. We fished on top of the slopes where the waterlevel went from 14 feet up to 6 feet. The catfish tend to stay in the deep parts during the day and start feeding the shallows at dawn. The bait we used was the awesome Marine Halibut pellets from Dynamite Baits, in 21mm soaked in the Halibut liquid. We use the liquid for hardening the hookbaits, therefore the pellets stay longer on the hair. We used 4 or 5 pellets on the hair (See picture for rig details.)

For our rigs we use big Gamakatsu hooks size 1/0 with heavy braided line which we also used for mainline.

We started fishing at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and at 8.15 in the evening, as soon as dawn set in, I got my first bite. Because I was fishing tight to the snags it was a case of brake or burst, so I gave full force and all my years of training with weights came in handy. The cat came out of the snags but then it almost pulled me into the water twice when it wanted to go to the right where there was a big tree in the water. When I was playing the fish I said to Tom that I hoped it was a 100 pounder and above 2 meters, which was my target. When I saw the fish first time in the edge it was huge and definitely the biggest fish I ever saw and even Tom who saw a lot of really big cats was impressed !! Because the fish was heading the snags I had to play it really hard and after 20 minutes Tom grabbed the cat on the first attempt and all hell broke loose!! He could not get it out of the water and I had to help him and even then it was not easy. This struggle took almost more time then the time I was playing the fish in the water. In the end we managed to get it on the bank where we tried to weigh the fish which was not possible. So we put it back in the water on a stringer for the night. In the meantime I caught another catfish which was small compared to the giant on the stringer. When it was completely dark we stopped fishing and decided to celebrate in a restaurant with some Russian anglers we had met and with Ronny.

The next morning it was time to weigh and measure the big catfish. With all the help we could weigh it correctly and it turned out to be one of the biggest cats ever caught at Mequinenza!!! It was 90 kilos( 198 lbs!!) and 2,40 meters!! Not a bad start as it was my first ever catfish….

With this fish my holiday was already a great success. After the pictures professionally done by Ronny and John and everything put on film by Bob Zellweger who I met on this trip and became a good friend the fish was returned straightaway and swam off without any problems.

All my thanks go out to Tom from Bavarian Guiding Service, who made this dream come true. I will never forget this day in my life. And also thanks to Ronny for making the beautiful pictures and for inviting me to Mequinenza. And many thanks to John for making the pictures aswell. I decided that the others should have the same opportunity to catch a big cat and so I stopped fishing the last day but I will definitely go back for some more material for a new DVD I will hopefully bring out in the near future. And offcourse the big potential of carp will make me come back to this very special place. To be continued…. I’ll be back