Large Spanish Carp & Comizo?

Our mini intensive 2 day fishing session in Madrid is over!

After a 2 week pre-bait with near 15kg of bait going in and another 8kg while fishing we managed to land over 20 fish.

Our objective was to catch a comizo barbel of 10kg or more.
Before doing this session I had previously caught comizo from the water, so we could say for sure they existed, but what we didn’t know was if they could be caught from the water to any size. Perhaps our target a 10kg comizo was unreal, especially since no one can say in -concrete – «big fish actually exist».

It´s hard to believe a reed lined, 100 acre mature gravel pit with bird reserve could only produce small fish, but that’s what happened with us. We have taken more than 30 fish from the lake, none of them have been more than 4kg.

Don’t get me wrong a common barbel of 8-9lbs (above photo), is a lovely fish, but it´s not the target, we want large comizo and carp. A carp of any size would be a start!

No time was lost, it did not take us long during the session to change tactic. In an attempt to deter small fish we changed rigs and used double baits on the hair. This measure did reduce the amount of small fish hooked, it also helped us to catch comizo, so on two parts it was a success, however the biggest mouths and bigger fish we wanted failed to show. Success therefore during those 2 days was not ours.

Measure success

So how do we measure results for a session like this?

I am not content with the result, while I shouldn’t make compassion’s with the UK, I cannot help think – if this lake were in the UK, it would contain a quantity of decent large carp. Catching in excess of 30 fish from the water is proof of one thing, you need to work harder to catch a carp! Not one fish out has been a carp and not a single barnel was over 4kg.. We know there are carp in the water. I have seen on various occasions mirror carp in the 2-4kg bracket. While it´s possible the predators: Bass, Pike and Comizo keep the numbers of carp down or at a low density, I cannot understand why we have not caught a carp. From other observations you might conclude that the water is over run with barbel, lot’s of fish with small/average weights competing for food. It’s a plausible conclusion to reach, but not conclusive enough to be a closed case. We have to study some more and try to realise the truth.

I have been told several times by locals who sometimes sit with us during the sessions that people used to catch carp easily from this water. Apparently 10 years ago you could catch carp on the surface with bread. The average fish sizes back then was about 7kg. 10 years on, a fish of that size would be a good upper 20, to say the least. I wonder where they have gone. We have to make an assessment of our failure and evaluate where we have gone wrong. Somewhere in the chain a factor has contributed to our final score 4.5 out of a possible 10.

We failed to nail a big fish, yet Angel on the CARPdiem team caught his first comizo barbel (see photo above), we did have a good time and as ever absorbed much. As far as the water goes, we will explore it’s other zones our list of work goes on!

Tight lines.