| First time succes in Portugal. |
After a very rainy winter that turned the rivers into authentic seas the first days of sunshine finally arrived, the rivers calmed down and returned to their normal course, nothing better to cheer me on to go fishing.
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| The place chosen for a short fishing session was a small river called Cávado in the area where Braga crosses, in Portugal. I have fished this place before with natural baits such as worms and crayfish with small results, but this time I decided to try fishing with boilies and pellets, the boilies I chose were BBQ & Sardine Oyster accompanied by the pop-ups and amino liquid food of the same flavour. I also opted to bait the second rod with a different combination and used Oily Crab Halibut Hooker Pellets and the fantastic Ocean Fresh Pellet Mix with Bloodworm & Shrimp. |
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The first rig I tied was a snowman with a bottom bait boilie and a pop-up, both BBQ & Sardine Oyster. The second rod rig was two Oily Crab Halibut Hooker Pellets 12mm. Then I soaked the baited rigs in the s BBQ Sardine & Oyster Amino Liquid Food for 2 hours and to further increase the attraction I opted for a PVA bag full of the pellet mix with bloodworm & shrimp. I choose the swim due to some rocks where the water flow was very slow and had seen where several barbels were searching for food. The average depth was between 5 to 6½ feet in gin clear water, the bottom was composed of fine gravel with some areas of weed.
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| I cast the rods carefully out, one right next to a zone of weed, the other behind a large rock in a zone of fine gravel. It didn’t take long until one of my buzzers begin to scream, immediately I felt that it was a small fish, and I was right it was a very small barbel of maybe a pound in weight, yet it couldn’t resist the Oily Crab Halibut Hooker Pellets rig soaked in BBQ & Sardine Oyster Amino Liquid Food, not a bad start and gave me some instant confidence in my new bait selection and performance. I began to see more activity in the swim so I launched about 20 boilies BBQ & Sardine Oyster as free offering for the hungry barbel to hold them down in my swims. |
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| The day was sunny and two hours later the buzzer was screaming again, this time I felt a better weight of resistance and a powerful Barbel fires into the weed area trying to escape, after 10 minutes of struggle I put him in the net, a nice barbel of 3 pounds. I immediately noticed that the fish was bleeding a lot because it was hooked on the top of the mouth, only with the help of pliers could remove the hook, as the fish was losing much blood and I had had kept it out of water for a while trying to remove the hook I decided to release it immediately to the water after disinfecting the wound. The health of the fish always comes first, even though failure to get a shot with the fish, I was happy because that was the first fish with the BBQ & Sardine Oyster boilies. |
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| I cast out again the snowman rig which had pleased the larger barbel, a few more free offerings went out and within another hour I was into my third fish of the session. Again on the snowman BBQ & Sardine Oyster rig and this fish felt stronger and heavier. The fish bolts straight into the weed and offers me a challenging fight that thankfully I win by following it 30 metres down river where there is a Windmill and I could net him safely. Yes! A beautiful barbel could not resist resisted the boilies BBQ & Sardine Oyster rig, carefully I weighed him and the scales stopped at 5.51 pounds, not bad for this small river, after a photo I quickly released him to his natural environment. |
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| I was very excited with this fish and just thinking about catching another this time larger again. I sat back down in the chair after the rod was sent back out and really started to enjoy the glory of the moment, suddenly I saw what looked like a big barbel floating on the swim, I looked a little closer and it actually was an otter, attracted to all the high attraction amino scents in the water, it was now raiding my hot spots in search of the source or maybe just attracted into the area because of all the small fish and barbel in the swim. The otter did a great job at scaring off the big barbel out of the swims. I stayed more than two hours watching the otter and the night started to fall and in Portugal night fishing is not allowed, so I ended my session and packed up. |
The story does not end here because I intend to return soon for another fight with these beautiful big barbels.
Thank you Ocean Fresh Baits.
Tiago Freitas
Carping With Pride
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