The International Balaton Carp Cup is one of carp fishing’s most prestigious and largest tournaments. Dynamite backed, Team CarpSpirit carpers, Jasmine Schuster and René Jauker recollect their event experience and how they caught some of the tournaments biggest fish from a tough area of the lake…
Jasmine Schuster with a Balaton Lake caught
DAY 1
It was Sunday April 22nd and we drew peg number 195 at Balatonvilagos, on the east side of Balaton Lake. It was a very hot day for this time and we sadly had no activity at our swim. We started the competition spending three hours searching out great spots and checked the area of our peg. But it was a bit of a disappointment that we had up to 400m a depth of maximum of just 1,30m. Actually we would like to have a closer spot too in a distance to throw the rods. Our plan was to fish and bait a spot at 150m and hope the carp come in close. But there was no activity, so we recognized that it won’t be successful. From 400m to 450m we had a depth between 1,30m slowly fallen to 3,10m. So we decided to made two baited spots further away from the shore to target the carp.
The pair used a boat to feed spots at distance on Lake Balaton
On Monday, early in the morning, we caught our first carp. It was a beautiful common carp with 10+kg. Two hours later we had our 2nd run, but a mussel cut through the line, so unfortunately, we lost it. The weather was like the day before, so we keep on going, stayed at our spots about 420-450m and fed about 50kg, a mix of Source and Crave Boilies 20mm & 26mm and soaked pellets with Krill and Robin Red Liquid. It was tough once again. In our section, the north-east side of Lake Balaton there were only a handful of carp caught during the whole day.
During the night competitors were banned from using boats due to the high winds. Perfect time to have a run. We had one during that time which we were only allowed to play from the shore. From 7am in the morning till midday we had three more fish in the net.
TUESDAY
Tuesday started very well. These hours were very important for the result and not to lose sight of the other teams, especially for the other teams in our section. It was also good for our self-confidence, to know that we have done things right in what was proving to be a very difficult area for fishing, as we could see by the other teams with less than us or no fish at all.
The day passed without no more runs. Now it was clear that in this area there wasnt much fish activity, we leaded the pegs from 182-206, but the section starts in the south, 20km far from our peg at number 174. Those pegs leaded the section. Our mission statement anytime is ‘never give up’, so we did and stayed focussed. It worked! At night from 11pm to wednesday 5am we caught 5 more carp. A little while after 8am we had one more carp weighing in at 1okg plus. The weather stayed sunny. But from midday on the swim went quiet again. One of the strong teams in our section from the Czech Republic had a similar catch rate to us, so we knew that it isn’t our fault that we were not catching any numbers.
Halftime: 11 Carps in the result, between 5-11kg. 7th Place in section from 33 teams and total 64th place from 206 teams overall.
Rene with one of his better carp from Balaton
We knew that the weather would change the next day, the water would be fresh and the temperature would drop. So we would fight for a good night, making our spots attractive again with feed and we changed our boilie mix, feeding more Complex-T than Source because of the colder weather.
Like the night before we landed five more carps. The most successful hookbaits were two 26mm Boilies on the hook. During the day the weather became worse. The predicted rain didn’t happen, but the storm was coming closer. A boat lock was opened and the crooked waves made it very difficult to keep our rigs in their place. We did the best and landed one carp at night during heavy rain.
The waves were so heavy that our baits were blown away. Early in the morning we recast and replaced the hooks and fed our spots again. During the day nothing happened. Just one, perhaps, big carp snapped one bait, but the line cut off so we couldn’t land it. We recognized that the fish were driven to the south of the lake by this time due the strong wind.
The last night was rather unsuccessful, just one more carp was in the net. At Saturday 8am the competition was brought to an end.
Another carp for Jasmine and Rene
Conclusion
For our area at Balatonvilagos, between Siofok and Balatonaliga we caught very well with some really nice carp, unlike many other teams in the tough section, which was one of the largest. The large section meant more teams were in better areas and so we didnt manage a section prize. However, we are also happy with our catches from what was an ultra difficult swim. We caught 18 carp, 7 under 5kg and lost another five. We fought til the end and had done the best which was possible. It was a great trip and we learnt a lot from it. Better luck next time…
Rene and Jasmine finished well despite being in a tough swim
Big Thanks for the support of CarpSpirit and Dynamite Baits.
Never give up! Looking forward to the next Competition.
Jasmine Schuster & René Jauker
CarpSpirit & Dynamite Baits Team
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