Guido Richard: Start of the season

At the beginning of November the fishing season ended very abruptly. The second Corona lockdown again brought a ban on movement and fishing. It was hilarious. Then, in mid-December, the restrictions were relaxed again and fishing was possible again. Although carp fishing in winter has never been my thing, the mild temperatures in mid-December lured me out and I fished for a few nights at the local quarry pond, where most of the region's team anglers gather. Although it's not my type of fishing, Laurent and I had a few fish and actually had a pretty good time. Laurent was even allowed to catch the sea king weighing just under 25 kg. He couldn't have ended the year better.

But that was it for me with winter fishing and I mothballed my carp stuff for the rest of the winter.

At the beginning of March I woke up from hibernation and had a great urge to go to the water again. The weather conditions were also suitable. In the evening, with the last rays of sunshine, I drove to the river and distributed a few hands of boilies right in front of the stone pack to fish there the following evening.

It was wonderful to be on the water again, the sky was clear with stars and just before midnight I caught a small, round mirror fish. How nice!! As it became light and the frost covered my umbrella, a continuous sound from my spark woke me up. After a short but intense drill I landed a river mirror with an almost continuous line.

Next week the wind should be from the south bringing some rain with milder temperatures overnight. I definitely didn't want to miss this phase of the weather and I wanted to be prepared. So I drove to my favorite body of water and looked for the right spot. After a lot of paddling and searching, I found a suitable area. In front of the site there was a large plateau that slowly sloped down towards the bank and formed a slightly deeper channel parallel to the bank with softer soil and last year's remains of weeds. I was pretty sure the fish would move along there looking for food. So I handed out some food. I repeated the action twice and checked the places with the aquascope, the few handfuls of boilies were gone, hard to say whether they were all the coots or fish, but it was definitely good for my trust. The expected change in weather came as expected, the mild southerly wind pushed my small, loaded dinghy across the choppy water, I didn't need much rowing. I was a little late, as I was taking out the rods it was getting darker and it started to rain. Luckily, as always, I had everything in my HammerDashs and I was able to just leave all my stuff and deal with the rods first.

At night I heard some fish rolling. Unfortunately, nothing happened at all. When it finally got light and I crawled off the lounger and stared at the water with a warm café in my hand, my good faith in the area against doubts and lots of questions had changed.

The fish were there, I heard them jumping! Are they eating? Did they just pass by? Nothing unusual for a large water system... I was so deep in my thoughts that it took me a few seconds to notice the continuous tone of my radio box. The fish put a lot of pressure on me, I jumped into the boat and rode towards it. He was really strong, he came up several times only to dive straight back down and tear several meters of line from the reel. A few times I missed the fish just in front of the landing net. The wind was strong, with every wave the water splashed up and I was slowly soaking wet. I finally managed to turn the boat with its back to the wind and let the carp slide over the edge of the landing net. It was a relatively wide mirror, just like I wanted one for the spring from the water.

I rowed back vigorously. To my greatest surprise, another rod also expired. Fortunately, I was able to fight the little Schuppi from the bank. When the two animals were taken care of, I brought out the two rods and put on dry clothes. I didn't stay dry for long as I almost got a double run again shortly afterwards. Again I caught a strong mirror carp and a small scale carp.

All my doubts from that morning were gone. The plan worked. I was proud and happy. In the late afternoon I caught two more shad and 3 monster chub. When I took the rods out fresh for the night I was again pretty sure it would work. But it should be completely different. The wind became stronger and there was a thunderstorm with lightning, thunder and several hailstorms. A thunderstorm at the beginning of March? For me the first time that I have experienced this here. And in fact, from that moment on nothing happened until the next afternoon when I packed up. I'm sure the hail cooled the water down a bit and the carp were completely wiped out afterwards.

A few days later I was excited to go fishing again, even though the conditions were bad: north wind, extreme high pressure and the thermometer was expected to drop to minus five degrees at night. But I was motivated. Late in the afternoon I loaded the boat and headed for the targeted area. Shortly after all three rods were down, I actually caught a shad, which I photographed in the last rays of the sun.

I was really cold that night and caught a small mirror fish in the first few hours of the morning. It was cold as hell!

Everything remained quiet during the day. It wasn't until late on the second night that a real beauty woke me up. My first, real zeiler from this water! In the morning a friend visited me with a hearty breakfast. That felt good after another cold night! We photographed the fish and I happily packed up. Nothing like taking a warm shower!

I hope to report on warmer fishing adventures next time :-).

Guido