7 August, 2017 | Carp | Articles | News
1 CommentsProfessional footballer Thomas Cywka made the most of the end of season break with a his 2nd trip of the year to France…
This summer I had the shortest break ever between football seasons… just 2 weeks. So this could only mean one thing – 2 weeks on Rainbow!
We played our last match on Sunday so to save some time I flew to Bordeaux straight after the final whistle of the game. My fishing friend drove with all our tackle to Rainbow on Friday, to start fishing on Saturday as usual (thanks Michal – I know it’s not easy to drive 2000km on your own, much appreciated and you deserved some extra hours sleep).
He already had a few fish on peg 5 before I arrived so we were very positive about our session.
Unfortunately nothing happened for me on peg 5 (except a few bream) but after a week we moved to peg 14 which hadn’t produced a carp in 4 weeks!
That said we were still positive as we knew there could be some big fish around that peg. I placed my hookbaits in shallowest areas I could find on my side of the swim.
Usually I don’t touch my rods until Tuesday (if I don’t get a take), but on Sunday evening a “lovely” duck hit my line close to the rod tip, rod bounced, hanger off… I had to make a decision to go and have a look if the lead and hookbait had moved or to leave it as it is. I decided to go and have a look so I could have clear head over the next few days. I don’t know why, but I moved that rod from plateau in open water and put it in about 60cm/1.9ft under an overhanging bush (you can see a PVA foam that popped up).
I decided not to change the hookbait which was a Red-Amo hardened bottom bait and CompleX-T pop-up. I fed 5/6 handfuls of Red-Amo over the top, quickly resharpened my hook and came back to the bank
On that rod, at about 1am at night I had my only take during my 2 week session. I jumped into a boat, fishing locked-up and forced fish to go to the open water where the battle took place. It felt like a good fish!
When I saw it for the first time I knew it was over 20kg… After about 20 minutes I had it in the net, looked over and guessed it was around 25kg – a nice broad back and long body.
I came back to the bank, my friend looked at it in the shallows and said “Thomas, it’s close to 30kg – easy!”.
I didn’t really think much of it at the time – I was just so happy to get my first fish of the session! Then we put the fish into the sling and lifted it… then we knew it was something rather special and definitely over 30kg! Scales stopped at 34.1kg/75lb! I couldn’t believe it!
We took some shots quickly as we didn’t want to stress the fish too much and put it back. I didn’t sleep until about 4am that night, messaging my family and friends and just sitting and enjoying some celebration coffee.
Nothing more happened for me on this trip – a few bream and one proper carp take… but what a take! I’d beat my previous PB by 5kg/11lb so I couldn’t ask for more!
I’m back on the Rainbow for a 3 week session in December so I’ve already started some preparation for this trip. I hope there will something to talk about after that trip as well
Good luck and tight lines
Thomas Cywka
1 Comments
Hello dynamitebaits.com owner, Thanks for the well written post!