February update

February news

We didn’t get time on the bank much through Feb; and the cold front did manage to affect us, it was freezing.

First off Andreas took time out and braved the freezing conditions for came for a couple of days Barbel fishing. His first visit with us last year was for carp, he smashed his PB of 8lb several times, over the 3 days he banked fish to over 36lb. This time, the talented fly angler wanted to pursue Barbel of over 10KG, 22lb.

We fished for the elusive Orellana Barbel, on the swim that Dave had the 30lb Comizo out late last year, even though the temperatures dipped to an incredible -8 on the 3 day session he still had a take, but unfortunately didn’t make contact with the fish...

The only other session was on the Orellana when Stu popped up for a few days. He was very confident with the new bait he had with him, the well proven Essentialbaits B5, I would also fish with a cracking bait, Vital baits k12.  

On arriving at the bank, there was the odd fish showing but not many, however, 24 hours into the session, as night fell, we noticed the warm sun had brought out the midges and other flying insects too. Throughout the night, we had liner after liner, carp crashing and topping all over the 100 acre bay and over our baited spots, but none of the rods burst into life. Nothing. The fish had come in and feasted on the hatch and weren’t interested in anything else, even the selection of quality baits from Vital and Essential.

We stuck it out, with the hope of a winter lump, but after 3 days, with seeing fewer fish every day we thought about just getting our first fish of the year. There was 2 choices of venues for us to get our first fish of the New Year, one being Sierra Brava. As we were discussing our options, a Spanish angler approached us from out of nowhere, we chatted and found out that he had been fishing Brava for 3 days and it was as equally as hard there, he and his 2 friends had blanked and thought they would move to Orellana. After he left, I made a quick call to Jake at Brava who confirmed the fishing was slow, so we took a 3^rd option, go home and live to fight another day. At least I did get the chance to dust the cobwebs off my fly rod and practice my diabolical casting, and of course it’s always great to be on the bank…..