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River Ebro trip


Browning 425 clay hunter
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Afternoon all. Me and a few mates are talking about a trip to the Ebro for catfish. Just wondering if anyone's been before and got any advice/tips. We're looking at booking with catmaster tours for August 2015.

 

It's £500 p/p but some of you might remember last year I asked about predator lakes in Norfolk, which is meant to be full of 100lbs + cats and by the time 3 of us had payed for the fishing, van hire, fuel, food and bait it costs practically the same as a trip to Spain.

 

So has anyone been off here ?

 

ATB 425

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Never been , but interested on how your norfolk trip went , not well I am guessing as I have seen nothing about it on here.

Hi fenboy, in short predator lakes was a bit of a disaster. I hadn't been fishing for a couple of years so updated all my tackle at a cost of cira 3K. Did loads of research, spoke to people who'd been(some off here). Went with an open mind on tactics and took about £200 of every type of bait. Had one of the best pegs on the lake and after 6 days i'd foul hooked a 20+lbs common on dead bait( shows my rigs were working as it was obviously taking the freebies I'd put out) and had 3 runs that when I struck nothing was there, my mate caught a 7lbs cat and the other lad had a few carp too 18lbs. For the last few days I mainly fished dead baits of different verities targeting the cats and sturgeon(shhhhh!). Nobody else on the lake caught anything of note. The only chance was my mate hooked 'something' that after 10 seconds of stripping line off it snapped brand new pro line 35lbs breaking strain. The weather was pretty hot but never really saw much moving about.

 

We could of just gone to our localish 'lakemore' and caught more. But nothing ventured nothing gained.

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The runs you had with nothing on would most likely be sturgeon picking line up on there backs / fins , the lake I used to fish in france had them and they were a pain in the **** for that , you could sometime net them and there would be no hook in them just snagged on the line , the lake owner reconed they were great for clearing any line up that had been lost in the lake , you rarely caught one that did not have some line wrapped around it !

 

Trouble with cats in still waters is they can go weeks without feeding then all switch on for a week or two .

On the ebro they have to use energy to combat the flow so will need to feed much ore often.

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I've been twice with Catfish Capers in Caspe. The fist time I went with a buddy and there had been a huge amount of rain (it was October). I caught one cat of around 20lb and my buddy had a single cat of just over 100lb. The guides worked really hard but the conditions had killed it, the rain meant that they opened up a big dam further up river, releasing cold water and turning the river mud brown.

 

At the time CC offered a free holiday to anyone who failed to catch a 100lb fish over a week of guided fishing. So a year later I went again in August and took my father.

 

On the fist day everyone caught and there were several 100lb cats. My dad caught a 44lb common on I took carp to 36lb (such a pity they were on cat rods!). My lagest catfish was 167lb and on the last day my father caught a 187lb fish (I think it was the 7 or 8th largest that year by CC). It was as long as him and could have eaten a football.

 

Hauling in these monsters non-stop is something that every fisherman should experience once, they are amazing creatures.

 

I'm indending to go again but this time later in the year (when its not so frighteningly hot) and just for the carp.

 

Also, being fully guided and provided with kit worked well for me. None of my carp gear could cope with a big catfish! Food and beer is pretty good there too.

Edited by theshootist
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Thanks all for the input so far. I've now spoke to a few on here and catfish capers seems to be the one to go with. It's such a help having people with experience of these company's first hand. I had a chat on the phone with bigadam last night that realty helped so once we've decided when we're going I'll be booking it. Any ideas for best time to go, thinking of July/august. ATB 425

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I lived in Spain for about 5 years fishing the ebro many times for the big carp around Rib Roca , Flix and Maquinenza, We fished with a club from alicante and used to stay in camp sites along the river, The Embassy stretch above the dam at Riba Roca And the chemical factory stretch above the bridge in Flix were especially good, saw many big cats and carp caught along these areas, be careful if you use eel for bait as its illegal to take eels from the river, you can buy eel bait but keep your reciepts as the law will ask to see them, make sure you have the correct permits, a regional licence , plus insurance for third party ,and a day ticket for each section of the river you intend to fish in that day, local law will not accept excuses even in Spanish, penalties are fierce, confiscation of all your gear and big fines.

 

post-27014-0-10406300-1418681898_thumb.jpg

 

Pictured is the Embassy stretch above the dam , Riba Roca, the headland is the site of a decent campsite run by germans with boat hire and lots of help for fishermen,including licences and bait.

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This photo was taken on the chemical factory stretch above the bridge at Flix, there is also a good stretch around the back of Flix between two sets of sluice gates which control the river levels, Best time of the year in my opinion is beginning of September, July and August can be hot as hell , if the river levels are low it could be a bit boring waiting for bites, Junes ok, these big cats feed well as soon as the water starts to warm up, but you can get some very high water levels full of rubbish coming down from the mountains , we once spent a very long weekend in Mequinenza hoping the levels would drop so we could fish and watching dozens of big carp feeding in the mass of floating weed and rubbish along the river bank, Tight lines all

 

 

post-27014-0-36355700-1418682789_thumb.jpg

Edited by lakeside1000
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July/Aug. are too hot and catch rates drop. End of April/May/early June or Sept/Oct for the best periods. This is what Martin told me when I went out there. We went in July and it was 42 degrees every day.

 

Thanks all for the input so far. I've now spoke to a few on here and catfish capers seems to be the one to go with. It's such a help having people with experience of these company's first hand. I had a chat on the phone with bigadam last night that realty helped so once we've decided when we're going I'll be booking it. Any ideas for best time to go, thinking of July/august. ATB 425

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