Ebro Spin Fishing March 2017
Traditionally, I’ve been spending two weeks in March with my father and my brother on the Ebro River in Spain, opening the spin fishing season. The chances to catch a big one in March are quite good, but the fishing conditions might be quite unpredictable. The last two years, we were facing cold weather, strong wind and high water level due to snow melting. From our experience, the cold snowy water makes catfish inactive. With such conditions in the past, we were more focused on zander fishing. However, this year we were lucky. We arrived to Spain at 17th of March and stayed for two weeks at Riverside Lodge, the fishing camp run by my brother and his associate. The weather was nice with daily temperatures of 20-25 ℃, dropping down by night to 8-12 ℃. The temperature of the water was 11-12 ℃. We started good from the first day catching a couple of smaller cats and one big catfish of 230 cm, caught by my brother. And it was getting better and better. The next day, my father caught another one of 232 cm, followed by mine of 226 cm. My brother unfortunately renewed his tennis arm injury and he could not fish all the time with us. Even when he was fishing, he couldn’t manage to fight the fish himself, but my father or I had to take over his rod. Nevertheless, after one week, we already caught seven big ones and plenty of zanders and smaller cats. At the end of the first week of our stay, the weather changed. It started raining and even snowing in the mountains. One could see white colored mountain tops in the distance. This affected the fish activity, and in the next 3-4 days, we didn’t have much of big fish action. As the weather got warmer, the fish started to show more activity again.
The first warm night after the rainy days, I was with my brother, alone in the boat. It was quite late after midnight, as the brother had hit on his lure. After I retrieved my lure and released the boat from the anchor, he passed me over his rod. It was clear we have a big fish, but it was not one of the biggest. However, after several minutes in drill, a bright shadow of the fish appeared on the surface. It was a beautiful yellow mandarin catfish of 204 cm. And when we thought, it couldn’t get better, it turned out it could. The next day the water got cloudier. My brother’s instinct told him it was the water for the biggest fish. And he was right. We got out in the afternoon and anchored the boat. Just as we started fishing, the father caught one smaller cat. Shortly after that I had attack on my lure. The way the fish kept swinging my rod, it was clear I have a really big one. The fish managed to take some line from the reel during its initial attack but the drag of my Penn TRQ 5000 was set so tight, that the fish just turn over and started swimming into the opposite direction towards the middle of the stream, keeping the line under large tension. That was the moment I made a fatal mistake. Instead to relax the drag of my reel, since the fish was anyway out of the dangerous area, I was waiting for my brother to detach the boat from the anchor, so that we can start follow the fish. As he pulled the boat towards the buoy, the line snapped and I lost the fish. It was the first time that my 0.40 mm Ultra Cat line from Berkley snapped due to over tension. The big fish lost. But the story is still not over. As I was still under impression of the lost fish, my father got another hit to his lure. Sitting next to the buoy, I could detach us in a moment and we started follow the fish. After 20 minutes in drill, we could land a 250 cm catfish weighting 105 kg. And that was not all from that day. After taking care of the fish, we returned to the spot and my father had another hit on his lure. The fish started taking line with an enormous speed and before we detached from the anchor it managed to snap the line. We came back in the night at the same spot losing another one due to the line snap and the next one that managed to get off the hook. The next days were successful as well, but we didn’t have any more attacks of such mega size cats.
Finally, in two weeks we caught 13 big cats with over 2 meter in size, a number of smaller cats and many zanders. The highlights were a 2.5 m / 105 kg cat and a beautiful mandarin cat of 2.04 m.
The big fish sizes: 2.50m, 2.36m, 2.32m, 2.30m, 2.30m, 2.26m, 2.26m, 2.25m, 2.24m, 2.20m, 2.11m, 2.04m, 2.04m.
Click here to see gallery photos.
