Guido Richard: My favorite month

April, April, my favorite month! Nature is slowly becoming green again, the trout are catching mayflies again, the carp are getting into the feeding mood again and are often enjoying the first warm rays of sunshine in the shallow water. In addition, the predatory fish season is over for us on the third weekend in April. You got it: April keeps me very busy with my three favorite types of fishing. But this year everything was a little different than usual. Yes, there was the Corona crisis, which was slowly driving us all crazy, and the abnormally cold weather until at least the middle of the month. That's why the first two weeks of April were rather difficult for me on the large body of water, where I had been active since the beginning of the season.

The water just didn't want to get any warmer. On the contrary, it actually got colder again than in March. I shined most nights but tried many different areas to get the fish. Every now and then I managed to outwit a small, wild scaly carp - which I was always really happy about - and so I was able to keep my motivation up.

I often went out on the river with my fly rod with my good fly fishing buddy Dylan to outsmart trout. A change from carp fishing is always important to me, even if it was just a few hours between two nights.

In mid-April the weather slowly got better, the weather forecast showed three sunny and warm days. This was the moment to look for the fish in the shallow water and to fish very mobile during the day. My friend Laurent took a few days off to fish with me. We spent the first morning exploring all the shallow water areas we knew of, where the carp usually come in with the first rays of sunshine. However, they were all empty of fish and dead. Except for one area that had a few bream, tench and a few small scale carp. So that was our clue for the first night. We each brought two rods into the shallow water and two a little deeper to the edge of the shallow water at a depth of three meters.

The afternoon was pleasant and we were able to enjoy the sun bare-chested for the first time this spring. The water was calm because the cold north wind had finally stopped. Unfortunately the night was quiet and so after a quick café we packed up again and went looking for other shallow water areas. At around 10 a.m. we had been searching for a good two and a half hours when suddenly in the middle of nowhere the water was turbulent and cloudy. A few minutes later we also saw a carp jumping. We approached and there we saw what must have been several dozen carp escaping under the boat. They were there, but really! Without making any noise, we let the boat glide to the shore and set the rods.

Less than ten minutes later we had two small and pretty scale carp in the net. We simply fished with pop-ups right in the middle of the carp. In less than five hours we managed to land six fish. In the afternoon the weather changed. It got windy and cooler again. We then looked around the boat several times and there were no more fish there. So the night and the next morning remained completely quiet. We had no choice but to keep looking. But we couldn't find her again after another three days.

Of course the fishing pressure we generated also played a part in this. I had never experienced anything like this on this body of water before: so many fish at once, and they were so easy to catch. Most of the time you find a few fish and then catch one at night; but mostly nothing more. Recently I was able to talk about this with a very experienced angler on this water. He too had experienced something like that in the spring; how huge schools of fish head to an area to feed, but similar to ours, then move on very quickly. Goodbye… Laurent and I considered ourselves lucky to be able to experience something like that. Well, there is actually no such thing as luck in fishing, luck is usually created, just like this time, through motivation and effort. To be able to experience something like that, I would have easily accepted another three nights of sleep.

Guido