Mention freshwater fishing in Spain and immediately one thinks of huge catfish or giant carp in the river Ebro, I’ve enjoyed catching both from this mighty river so my latest trip to Spain with my fishing pal, James Gardner, was to be something quite different.

We flew into Madrid, a 2 1/2 hour drive south west into the mountains of the Extremadura region, with our fishing guide Lee saw us arrive at the small town of Helechosa which was to be our base for the week.

The river Guadiana has several hydro-electric dams along its length forming massive reservoirs, the huge crystal clear water before us was to be our "fishing hole" for our stay, at around 15,000 acres we didn't think we'd get bored. Our first day saw me wearing 6 layers of clothing and I wasn't overdressed! It was early February but this is Spain isn't it suppose to be warmer here?

The plan was find the baitfish, in this case bleak, and then catch the predators, barbel, pike and black bass, yes I did say barbel. We trolled small deep diving plugs which ran to approximately 20-25', first fish was my first ever Spanish pike of 2lbs, well below average according to Lee, we both caught a few more of these below average fish until we finally found what we were looking for, a concentration of bleak, in 80' of water! The shoal was holding between 60-80', by a rock island, and Lee assured us he could see barbel on his echo sounders screen.

A quick change of lures saw us both lowering 4" Storm shads down into the depths; we were unsure where to expect takes so we slowly lowered our lures, on a tight line, in 5' steps, being careful to note the depth each time we let more line out. Amazingly we caught right on the bottom at over 80' with the shads hanging vertically, while static below the rod tip. Takes were very subtle affairs often beginning with a sharp bump, if you could resist striking, this was followed by further taps, at this point you had to lower the rod, keeping the line tight, this resulted in the rod tip pulling over and a sharp lift set the hook into the barbel. So effective was this method that we soon crushed the barbs on our lures as the barbel were taking the shads deep enough to require long nose pliers to unhook them.

This was exciting stuff as barbel after barbel between 4-7lbs came to our rods along with more small pike, James had one pike from 88', yes 88' and remarkably all the fish went straight back to the depths as soon as they were released, I can assure you that none showed any signs of distress, if I hadn't seen it myself I wouldn't have believed it.

Over the following days we searched other areas of the reservoir having a good look around we both saw enough to make us eager to return and this trip wasn't over yet. The reservoir isn't just an open expanse of water it has many islands, bays and creeks that give it so much character and all these features just screamed fish. We found, due to the very cold water temperature, that the only place we could catch barbel was from an area we christened "Bleak rock", the fishing now became very interesting as we focused more and more on the echo sounder.

We positioned the boat over the bleak and fished our lures, underneath, above or on either end of the shoal making our baits look like stragglers. While watching the screen we frequently saw individual fish appear at mid-depth 40', some 20' above the bleak, by winding our shad baits up through the water in 5' steps we were able to intercept these fish which turned out to be pike! Its not often that I use the term 'fishfinder' when referring to echo sounders but in this case the technique totally relied on the 'fishfinder', "stalking pike" is now another unusual method in our armoury along with 'clonking' catfish which is totally dependant on these devices.

The fish in Spain don't seem to behave as we expect them to, normally you would expect pike to be near the bottom in such cold conditions, these fish were nowhere near the bleak, while the barbel were often very close to the bottom with the bleak, although we did catch some pike on the bottom as well. And what about those bleak, a fish that at home inhabits rivers and the upper layers of water, we never found them in less than 60' often as deep as 80' sometimes suspended over 120' of water!

Lee informed us that 4 years ago bleak were introduced into the reservoir and 2 years ago the population had increased to such an extent that all the predators were now feeding heavily on them which had in turn increased their weights, the pike have now been caught up to 29lbs, the bass reach 5lbs+ and the Comizo barbel 14lbs. Lee and his clients normally use live and deadbaits during the winter turning to lures and flies in the warmer months. I'm assured that during the spring and summer mayhem often ensues as bleak are herded up on the surface and savaged by the barbel, pike and bass, surface lure fishing then becomes the preferred method.

I'm not sure I believe them so James and I will have to investigate for ourselves to confirm whether its true or not.
Our final tally was 30 barbel to 7lb 12oz with an average of around 5lbs and 23 pike to 13lb 8oz although the average of around 3-4lbs, Lee insisted that we were very unfortunate catching so many small pike, his catches over 2 years on the reservoir consist of pike ranging between 8-15lb with occasional 20's, the build of the double I caught was as fat as any trout water pike we've ever seen, I know Neville Fickling was so impressed when he fished the water with Lee last year that he's returning this summer.

If you fancy a trip to a future predator Mecca you can contact Lee on www.spanishsafaris.net

Andy Lush