WINTER ZANDER FISHING IN SPAIN 2009

Britain is experiencing the coldest weather for 20 years. Its 7.30 am on January 3rd 2009 and the temperature is down to minus six and a half as we load the van to go to Spain. Although it should be warmer in Spain, we are not going far enough to the south to benefit from the warmer Mediterranean climate. It is still mid-winter and with the cold front currently settling over Europe we are expecting to encounter frosty nights and cold foggy days. I took the same amount of kit, bedding, clothing layers and thermal suit that I would do in this country; enough to stay comfortable in a bivvy for a week of frosty nights.

River Ebro Ariel View

The plan is to investigate the zander fishing on the river Ebro in Spain around the towns of Flix, Mequinenza and Caspe. Recent reports of large numbers of zander being caught from the deeps in dammed areas came with talk of huge zander over 15 kilos. In his recent book on zander fishing, Mark Barrett states that the Spanish zander record currently stands around the 18 kilo mark – that’s around 40lb. With all due respect, this seems a bit of a vague statement and research on the internet only reveals that the official rod-caught world record is 11.42kgs from the Baltic Sea at Trosa in Sweden. I can’t find a photo of anything bigger but remain hopeful.

Packaged angling holidays with the guiding services are popular and, though it is tempting to be catered for and put on the fish, I have always preferred a deeper adventure than this. It would be more satisfying to explore the area with a map of the river system and then rely on watercraft and gut feelings to find unknown swims. Camping beside the water twenty four seven will ensure that main feeding times are identified and never missed.

We bought the Spanish rod licence over the internet a week before we left. It was easy to do – put Catalunya fishing licence in to Google and there will be links to the site where a copy of the application form can be downloaded in English. The form is an Application for a Recreational Fishing Licence which is issued by The Generalitat de Catalunya. You pay for it online at a cost of 14.75 Euros for a 12 month licence and it takes 24 hours to process before you can print your copy.

It ended up costing about the same as flying there on a package angling holiday. Three of us travelling in our own van would have worked out slightly cheaper but Paul injured his leg and had to pull out so it was just Graham and me that went. The journey took us 25 hours - 19 hours of driving and 6 hours of breaks ­- and we could take as much of our own tackle as we wanted without airline luggage restrictions. Sat Nav guided us easily through the channel tunnel and across France on pleasant and uncongested roads. It was so much easier than our congested multilane systems and of course with the buzz of excitement in the van you seem to be there before you know it.

 From my front door to our first destination at Flix was just under 1200 miles. We headed for the dam at Flix but the waters above the dam are designated as a nature reserve and there is no fishing allowed. The river below the dam looked good so we did a night in a tempting swim. I was expecting to get a bleak a chuck on the waggler and maggot because I had been told that I would never be short of bait. Unfortunately it is now January, freezing cold and dour. I’m sure it’s a different thing once the water warms in spring but I couldn’t get a bite and was unable to zander fish that first night due to having no bleak or roach for bait.
 
Next day we drove on towards Mequinenza and fished for bleak at every bridge river and dam on the way but still couldn’t get a bite.
 

Bleak Fishing on the Segre

At Mequinenza we bought a permit to fish the Mar de Aragon above the Riba Roja dam. This cost just 3 Euros for the season and is bought from a bar - the bar Royal near one of the tackle shops. There is always one of the three tackle shops in Mequinenza open and they can point you in the right direction and supply frozen packs of 20 large bleak for 5 Euros, along with any tackle you may need.  We parked outside one of the tackle shops and soon had bait, permit and provisions. The shop next door provided groceries and water. In fact with just the one stop we got everything we needed and were soon on the way.

Our permit was for the large lake above Riba Roja dam. This reservoir is known by many other names such as Top Lake, Lake Caspe, Embalsa de Mequinenza or Mar De Aragon. This section of the river starts at a large dam just above Mequinenza. The dams forms a huge reservoir that is trapped between sheer rocky sides and the water backs up all the way to Escatron which is120km away. In places it is over 3km wide and the depths run to over 70 metres.

The first swim we fished was a very deep one close to the Riba Roja dam. The snags were horrific and I must have lost 30 legers during the 24 + hours we spent there. When we did get runs everything snagged solid on the strike. Patience finally ran out at sunset and we quickly loaded the gear in the van and moved before dark.

Setting indicator on Ebros' big lake

We set off towards the River Ebro at Flix but there was not enough time to make it there before dark. As we drove along we caught sight of a river and went down a rough track to it. The track ran along side a fast flowing length of river with quite a lot of shallow reaches. Angling instinct kicked in. Watercraft is my thing. There was an area of slacker water below a raft of weed and debris that had gathered against a fallen tree. The water carried a green tinge that made it look deep and inviting and I could imagine a shoal of small fish beneath the weed raft with a zander lurking in the deeps below waiting for the light to drop. It was going dark. This swim just had to be fished. There was a lack of space on the bank and my bivvy ended up protruding into the track so we put a flashing beacon beside it to warn any cars that may use the track in the night. Ten minutes after putting up the bivvy. I got a run on dead bleak cast near the floating raft of debris. The fish put a satisfying bend in the rod and I soon had my first Spanish zander on the bank. Start as you mean to go on sounds a good motto to me. It seems the McConnell luck works in Spain too and the first one was a double at 10.03.  Zanda!

I settled down after this capture and then realised that this can’t be the Ebro because it is flowing in the wrong direction. We were most amused to realise that we didn’t know where we were. We later learnt that this was the upper reaches of the River Segre. There were no more runs that night as a sharp frost chilled the water and froze the puddles over on the lane. In the middle of the night as I lay in the bivvy I heard the ice on the puddles cracking and heard strange scraping noises. Thinking it must be Graham on the move from his camper I shout some friendly obscenities out. The noises that then came from outside the bivvy were unidentifiably freaky and definitely not Graham. I came out of the bivvy in defence mode with a bankstick in my hand and there in the torchlight was a fully grown wild pig. It squealed on full throttle and I was shouting “Graham, Graham A f***ing pig.” Have you ever seen a wild pig sprint? Graham’s head popped out of the van and we were in hysterics as the pig ran past the van with its trotters stumping the ground and roaring belly grunts of protest as it ran. Graham shouting, “coooeee, coooeee, stick the pig”
In the morning I witnessed one of the greatest feats of nature I have ever encountered. The biggest flock of starlings I have ever seen made their daily flight from the reed beds along the Segre to their feeding grounds many miles away. I have often marvelled at the flocks of starlings in flight in Norfolk. The way they twist, turn scatter and spray in patterns of unison is always a sight to behold. But here there were probably more starlings than in the whole of Britain. They crossed the river right where we were bivvied and the sound of the wing beats filled the air for nearly half an hour as they just kept on coming. I was in such awe to be so close to this phenomenon that all my senses peaked; the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and hearing seemed amplified. Even more so when a predatory falcon attacked caused the birds to suddenly twist into a downwards swoop and the next minute millions of birds were funnelling under the tree canopy and right over my bivvy, still twisting and turning together to avoid the attack. The noise was so intense and the birds were so close I seemed to be in the middle of a trillion wing beats. It is a memory I shall always treasure.

Weed Raft Swim on the upper Segre

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10.03 ZANDER

The following day we moved a mile and a half towards Mequinenza and found an idyllic setting. A massive, sheer, rocky cliff with an old church on it sheltered the river from the wind and a lush orchard lined the bank. An otter was basking on the surface enjoying the afternoon sun, while flycatchers hovered over the margins and a flock of sand martins skimmed the surface as they passed. Here the river was wider and there was an island diverting the current to the far side leaving a nice deep slack area on the nearside. There was a fig tree hanging over the margins of the swim I fancied. Slightly further out there was a deep channel before the riverbed rose again to become silted-up shallows in the middle with shallow rapid water beyond that. I cast towards the shallows in the middle and then bounced the rig back until I felt it drop off the shelf into the deeper channel. The other bait was placed in the margins just off the end of the fig tree.

 As soon as it went dark I caught a nice zander weighing 8.15, followed by a 7.08 then soon after that I caught one weighing exactly 11.00. It was a clear night with a hard frost and sport died away as the cold got a grip. In the morning after sunrise the frost melted and we decided to stay put for another day.

FIG TREE

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River Segre Evening River Scene

 A very happy man arrived to prune the trees in the orchard. He played very loud music from his van; so loud it could be heard at any point in the orchard and probably all the way down in Mequinenza too! It was his singing that put a smile on our faces and it wasn’t long before we had befriended the orchard owner and got permission to drive right on to the swims next time. That night the sky was again clear and the temperature plummeted. I got just the one run and after quite a struggle a good zander eventually slid into the net. It spewed out a few bleak in the net before we weighed it at 11.02. It looked very much like the 11.00 I had caught the night before so I checked the digital photos on the camera which confirmed that it definitely was a repeat capture. Rather than sulking after I had tamed it the previous night it had gone on the feed and put on weight.

11.00 Zander from the fig tree orchard

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Repeat capture at 11.02

Further downstream The River Segre flows in to the dammed area of the River Ebro at Mequinenza. The lower reaches near and in the town centre are wide and slow flowing as the waters are backed up by controlling sluices then run off for use by a power station. We didn’t fish the lower river and I am curious. The controlled flow affected the middle reaches where we were fishing and the way the water levels rose then fell reminded me of the Relief Channel where I have done most of my zander fishing so I felt quite at home on this river.

I didn’t fancy catching the 11 a third time so a move was in order. First we went into town for provisions and ended up buying a soft toy pillow – a one eyed zander about the size of a 6lber. Because there was an eye missing it was in a sale for half price and we got it for less than that after a bit of bartering.

Soft toy Zander Pillow

We decided to go back to the big lake further up near Caspe  to search for less snaggy ground. Unfortunately we got the access wrong and fired off down a track that got smaller and rougher as we went. It was getting too muddy as I think it was only used by 4 wheel drive vehicles  - and there we were! In places the road was collapsing and some huge boulders had rolled down on to the road. We flushed a scruffy old Spanish fox from amongst some boulders and it streaked off up the hillside in to the distance. It started snowing and the snow started to stick as we went down the steep track. There was only one direction to go and that was down - there was no way we could get back up the muddy hill even without the snow. Then it turned in to a proper blizzard and we couldn’t see where the edge of the track was. In fact we couldn’t see anything but blizzard. We should have been panicking by now but it will come as no surprise to those that know me to hear that we went down that hill loudly and laughing as the sense of adventure is all part of a trip and extremes like this hit a high. Suddenly we were by the lake in a huge picnic area. We had arrived at Punto de la Mar near Caspe and there was the proper tarmac road we could return on.
 
I tried a cast from the beach below the car park and found it was 60ft deep – that will do lets try here. Again no bites on the waggler but we had bought plenty of dead bleak which I buried in the snow. We got plenty of runs all day long and even more after dark. Again the snags caused problems and we had trouble raising hooked fish over the underwater rocks. We landed quite a few up to 7.04 but lost some good fish. I found that adding a large sunk-float to the leger link (as in the dyson rig) provided enough buoyancy to quickly raise the rig to the surface on retrieval, so avoiding the snags below. I started toying with ideas of how to raise a hooked zander to the surface more easily. Getting bogged down in technical impossibilities soon had me deciding on a more sensible solution – we must find some shallower swims without such a sheer drop-off.

I have heard it said that you can’t night fish the Ebro yet here there were plenty of anglers fishing at night. I know you can’t take a boat out after dark and if you do it gets confiscated with all associated tackle and vehicles but no one had any issue with us bivvying out and night fishing. The police were friendly and in good humour. They  were fascinated by our bivvies, delkims and all; and the way we are so at home with this lifestyle on the bank – well I’ve had just a little bit of practice….. I think they enjoyed the encounter and are now allies to look out for next time. The biggest problem we had on the bank was from the wild feral cats. They love fish and they know all about anglers habits. They raid your bivvy when you go for a piss and I lost all my deadbaits to cats the first night before learning to hang them from a tree where the cats can’t reach.

The second night in this swim was one of those really atmospheric nights when you just feel so glad to be alive. It was completely still with not a breath of wind. There was snow on the ground and the air was thick with freezing fog. A full moon lit up the fog until it seemed to glow and reflect back from the snow on the ground. In the middle of this surreal electric moon glow I lost two good zander from very deep water. Then I landed one of about 5lb and it totally freaked me out because its stomach was protruding from its mouth like a large sausage. Its eyes were bulging too. I had never encountered this before and it took a while for the penny to drop. It had the bends or something similar. Being hauled from the deeps so fast hadn’t allowed the swim bladder to regulate and this had caused the stomach to be pushed out of the mouth. It was so, so not nice. I pushed stomach back in and returned the fish. It swam off too but unfortunately it went belly up on the surface far out from the shore and provided another more urgent reason to find a shallower swim. I caught a zander of about 3.5 lb as I was half way through breakfast. It was in similar distress from the change in depth and when returned it went belly up. The cormorants here are so big they can eat a zander of this size and we watched one get the zander down its neck. These cormorants  are very useful to the zander angler - watch where they hunt. They hunt the same shoals of bleak as the zander do and can lead you to where the shoals of baitfish are  - or aren’t as the case may be.

&.04 from lake Caspe

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A small Zander in the Snow

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'Zander' written in the snow

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Rollovers in use on lake Caspe

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There is a large population of small zander in this lake and runs are commonplace. These smaller schoolie zander can be very shy of any resistance. I set the rollover indicator to provide minimum resistance. It proved to be the perfect indicator for this type of fishing and registered all the small pulls without deterring the zander. We didn’t get many dropped runs. After a few small twitch bites a run would usually develop and the indicator would rise smoothly to the top then lift itself off the line without the zander feeling any resistance. I was using a single treble hair rigged through the root of the tail with a tagging gun and this was effective. After running low on trebles and wire I continued to catch using single hooks with no wire trace (we didn’t encounter any pike). Keeping things simple and using a basic leger rig with a stop on the mainline and the hook tied directly to the end could be the way forward on this water where tackle losses are so high.

On the last day we explored a more remote area with a softer shoreline hoping to earmark some shallower swims for the next trip. However, we encountered difficulties with a thin layer of clay type mud that lifted from the tracks down through the olive groves and stuck to the tyres. Although the clay was only a thin layer it was too cloggy as the winter rains had left it sodden. Winter access is difficult so we planned to do a vehicle swap with a builder and bring a 4 wheel drive next time.  As I write this the next trip is already in the pipeline. We have even plotted swims using Google earth which was mapped during summer when the levels are low and the rock shelf I was losing my rigs on is uncovered. We will be going back before summer. I don’t fancy the intense summer heat, the parched dry landscape or the buzz from the catfish angling tourism. The locals say they have 9 months of winter and 3 months of hell. When would you go?