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Ebro Day-tripper

Ian Wakeford

I had been looking forward to my first break of 2001 at Easter more than usual this year. The UK was depressing me with cold and wet weather, with no signs of spring and the constant restrictions of movement imposed by foot and mouth, made fishing or any activity outside of urban areas so difficult.

I was going on a family holiday to Spain for a week to our holiday home, most of the trip would be a bucket and spade affair with the kids on the beach, but with the Ebro only 35 minutes away I was planning a trip in a new area that I had never fished before.

I had been chatting all winter to an acquaintance called Derek Curzon who had recently left York to go and live in Spain. Derek and I promised each other that we would meet up for a day and have a days fishing on the river near Amposta, right at the mouth of the Ebro Delta. Derek's grand plan was to set up as a fishing guide, but not only to offer Catfish trips but also to try and tap into the huge carp to be found on the river that no one fishes for. My opinion of Ebro carp is somewhat different, there are three types of carp to be found, too big for bait, too small for bait and just right!

The main species of fish on the Ebro are carp and mullet, the mullet look like the marine kind and seem to gather around anything vaguely smelly, like sewer outlets. They are excellent sport on light tackle and very difficult to hook as they have such small mouths. The carp on the other hand are extremely easy to catch, and seem to either be torpedo shaped commons or weird kind of crucians. Some of these crucians are huge and I have caught them over 2lb, the carp tend to be around 2lb too, but if you bait up you can attract shoals of 10-20lb carp and catch them one after another all day long. Rumours abound of carp over 50lb, but I have never seen one caught yet, I would also be surprised if you could get one in. The river is so powerful that a 15lb carp is a big handful on standard carp tackle, the bigger fish would need serious stepped up tackle to try and tame. The shame it is that no one really fishes for carp, only zander and mullet to eat, or catfish. The river would be an English coarse anglers dream, catching 2lb roach, 2lb crucians, double figure carp, mullet or even the odd barbel just by fishing swimfed sweetcorn all day long.

Anyway as usual I had set my sights on catfish but as yet very few had been caught all year, although by UK standards the weather was delightful, it was only about 25 degrees and rather windy. Now I always find that the wind is quite crucial on the Ebro, if the water is choppy, I believe that it effects the Catfish's ability to sense vibration on or near the surface. I was not feeling that optimistic about the trip.

I met up with Derek first thing in the morning and we took his boat down to Amposta slipway to launch. The first task of the day would be to catch bait, so we motored upstream a mile to a pontoon to try and extract a few carp or mullet.

Kylie the 17 foot Dory, "they do start Ian, honest…"

By now the wind had got up and it was so cold on the river that I had to put a light rain-jacket on. Needless to say that all we could manage for about 30 minutes effort was one mullet. We decided to start fishing for catfish and try and catch some more bait elsewhere when we had the opportunity. The rigs I use for float-fished livebait are kept quite simple, but the scale of the tackle may seem more like shark fishing than anything else. Believe me that the strength of the tackle is needed as a big catfish will quickly make short work of inadequate tackle in a powerful river 200 metres wide.

As you can see from the picture below, I use 50lb Berkley Fireline braid for my main line, 80lb mono for hook length, set up with a single Owner 8/0 for the lip hook and a Owner Stinger Treble 4/0 for the anal hook. And yes those hooks are 12 inches apart. For a float I use a polyball about the size of a cricket ball. I find that Hobby craft has a wonderful selection of these, into which I araldite a dowel insert with a eye whipped onto the end. I fish the float as a slider with a stop knot, as the depth of the river can very so much from one swim to another, you are constantly having to adjust the depth. Normally I fish at about 1/3 depth, trying to trot the bait along a line where the deep water shipping channel meets the shallows, this is usually in 8-12 feet of water. 

There are other obvious features to look for such as bays, eddies, holes, overhanging trees, sewer outlets (attracts mullet) but most of the river is fished by drifting with the flow in a boat.

A false dawn at Amposta, those grey clouds over the mountains mean a very blustery day. Those high cliffs where the bridge starts carry straight down into the water, at the base of the cliff the sounder read 62 feet of water!!!!!

Needless to say that my hunches were right, we tried all sorts of swims above and below Amposta, no catfish were seen either rolling nor being caught by other anglers. It just seemed that summer had not quite arrived in Spain and that a week or so of settled, windless and hot weather was all that was needed to settle things down.

By midday the river was choppy and very windy, note the river must be at least 200 metres wide at this point.

I would be returning in two weeks with friends for a dedicated catfish fishing trip for a week. Hopefully things will improve or I will be taking up river carp fishing.

If anyone fancies a trip on the Ebro Derek can be contacted on Derek@ebrocats.com, he charges between 35 and 50 pounds for a day depending on size of party, but can take up to 3 anglers in his 17 foot boat.

More to follow in May…………………..