30 June, 2025 | Carp | Angler Blogs | Articles | News | Catches

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Kristof Cuderman Banks his DREAM Carp – ‘The Mohikaan’ at 40.4kg (89lb)

Below, Kristof Cuderman details the capture of his dream fish – a 40-year-old Belgian mirror carp known as ‘The Mohikaan’.

 

Kristof Cuderman says…

My dream – to catch one of the most famous carp in the world which is over 40 years old, to set a new Personal Best, to catch my first carp over 40 kg, to add the 10th country over 70lb and 11^th country over 30kg – has just come true. I can still hardly believe what happened last week.

After being home for several days, the adrenaline rush caused by the amazing capture in Belgium last week slowly went away and I finally realized that this had really happened. I would really like to say sincere thanks to all of you guys who sent me so many nice messages, and liked or shared any of my posts about the catch. I appreciate it very much.

Let’s start at the beginning.

My story with ‘The Mohikaan’ started at Pelagicevo Lake in Bosnia in 2023. My good friends Kristof Vandenrijd and Jurgen Weyen from Belgium were fishing there and we started to talk about the big carp in Belgium.

My goal was to catch a carp over 30kg there. I mentioned about the Mohikaan, but I didn’t know that it was officially possible to book the swim at the lake and go fishing after her.

Kristof already caught her and at the moment he said why don’t I book a swim and try to catch her, since I have set my goal. It was a bit ambitious and extremely difficult, but I thought to myself why not.

From that moment on, I started to research, and I booked a 14 day session at the lake for September 2024.

The lake – Kelchterhoef, is 26ha large and up to 9 meters deep.

It is mostly used for sailing, swimming and paddling, with  just 4 pegs available for fishing.

The fish stock is really low too, with only 58 chipped carp present. The biggest and famous one is ‘The Mohikaan’, and the second biggest carp currently weighs around 22kg.

So, it was already challenging enough to catch even one carp in a week, not to mention what a challenge it was to catch ‘The Mohikaan’.

In September 2024, I arrived at the lake 4 days after my booking and I was fishing for 10 days. There are 2 pegs together on the same platform – 1,2 and 3,4. I booked pegs 1,2 and everything seemed perfect.

Conditions were good and ‘The Mohikaan’ wasn’t out for over 10 months.

My big fear from the day I booked the peg was that she would die before I would come since she was over 40 years old.

She was caught for the first time over 40kg already in 2013, and later she had a top weight around 45kg.

Luckily I got the drone photo from her which was made in May when she was chilling on peg 2. But in those 10 days most of the fish were in the area of pegs 3 and 4.

I managed to catch one beautiful mirror at 16.4 kg. Just one day after I arrived home I got a message from a friend Mik Dolmans that he caught Mo on peg 3 at over 41 kg…

 

I immediately booked again for 14 days, this time pegs 3 and 4 for the second half of June.

At the end of May and beginning of June, there is a big festival at the lake and the area is completely closed for 3 weeks. So I booked the first 14 days after the festival because I knew that at least 3 weeks before my trip, ‘The Mohikaan’ can’t be caught!

I was even lucky enough to get the chance to arrive at the lake 2 days earlier so in total I had the option to fish for 16 days.

I was informed that the water level was enormously high, but I didn’t even imagine how high it really was before my arrival.

The platform for fishing that is most of the time 60cm above the water was now 40cm below. I realised that this would make fishing even more difficult this year, because many trees were in the water and carp had a good hiding place.

I also knew that this year, only 20 carp out of 58 came out and that she wasn’t out yet which was great, but I was still hoping she was healthy and alive.

I saw 5 carp in my area on the second day and on the third day I caught one of these 5 fish.

In the next few days I didn’t see any carp in my area but I saw most of the carp and grass carp on pegs 1 and 2. Especially on peg 2 where many trees and bushes were under the water, carp were staying under them and chilling in shallow water.

The weather was sunny without wind with temperatures ranging from 28 to 33 degrees…

I was hoping that the weather would change or at least that the wind would start blowing. The guys who were fishing on pegs 1 and 2 in that week didn’t catch any fish.

I was thinking all the time if I could do something else, try something different, but every time I checked my spots, the bait there was untouched.

I tried to pre-bait other spots and check them later to see if the food would perhaps be gone – but nothing happened.

I saw just 3 grass carp and 1 carp in my area in the last few days.

In my second week of fishing, Tom van Oosterhout and his friend arrived on pegs 1 and 2 and I was sure that they would catch the fish because I saw most of the fish were in their area.

Tom also saw quite a lot of  fish and when I heard from a local guy that they saw ‘The Mohikaan’ chilling in peg 1, I was happy to know she was still alive. But the problem for me was that fish weren’t in my area.

Finally, the weather forecast showed that on the 11th day of my session there would be 3 days with wind 40-50 km/h. I hoped that this would change the situation and that carp would become more active.

 

The water temperature was 24 degrees but when I saw carp I was quite sure that they hadn’t spawned yet.

Two windy days didn’t bring any change for any of the anglers at the lake. However, on my 13^th day of fishing, I caught a grass carp at 5am in the morning.

This time I was happy that I caught it because I hoped that also some proper carp moved to my area.

I went to put the rod back and when I checked the spot where I caught grass carp I saw maybe in total 1kg of my bait. Two days ago there was still 8-9 kg of bait…

The adrenaline hit me because I was sure that it wasn’t just grass carp on the spot.

In the afternoon the wind stopped for a bit and when I checked for the fish I saw a couple of small carp in the bay in my area.

They were swimming in the water 1 meter deep around the trees.

At that moment I was quite sure that the fish hadn’t spawned yet.

I didn’t have a rod in that area because there were some buoys for the boats.

At 7.15 pm I started preparing the bait in the bank and when I took buckets to the boat, I saw that my orange swinger was a little bit up.

At this lake it is mandatory to use back leads and my rods were from 250 to 410 meters far so indication was not the best. That rod was around 320 meters away and 5.3 meters deep. Because I didn’t have any single beep I was quite sure a fish was on the hook.

I already had that kind of experience and knew this was typical of very big carp.

Adrenaline hit me big but I pushed myself to stay calm.

I took the rod, jumped in the boat and went in the same direction as my line went.

The first 150 meters were completely straight to the line where I had the rig, then the line was stuck just a bit in the weeds and when I saved it the line changed direction to 90 degrees!

At that moment I was sure I had a carp on the hook and I had the feeling it could be Mo.

The fish swam around 150 meters, but didn’t take any line or give any pressure that big carp sometimes do.

The connection between the braided line and fluorocarbon  came on my top ring on my rod and there was so much weed that I couldn’t reel it in.

I took the rod down and cleaned the weed and when I was holding the line with my hand I felt for the first time that there was pressure.

I took the weed away and went to reel further.

I had around 20 meters of fluorocarbon on and soon I had some of it on my reel.

I felt the pressure for a second and then I saw my fluro pop-up under the boat and in the next second I saw a big head and after some moments, ‘The Mohikaan’ was in all its grandeur on the surface before me.

I think everyone can imagine that my adrenaline was on the highest level possible.

I took my landing net and she was immediately in.

I just sat down in the boat and took a deep breath. Everything happened so quickly so the shock was even bigger.

After some time I checked in the landing net to see if she was really in and if she was ok. I have seen many big carp already but never before with such a big back.

I checked if she was ok and the fins were correctly in the landing net to take her to the bank. I remember very well how privileged I felt before touching her for the first time.

On the way to the bank all I could think of was that she would be ok and that I need to do everything possible not to cause her too much stress.

I left her in the landing net in the deep water and I first prepared everything. I didn’t take her out of the water at all. I weighted her in the water after holding her in the sling.

I then called Claudio Gasparcic who is responsible for the lake. He said that he would arrive to the lake in 10 minutes, also Jurgen and Tom came to see her and to take some photos and videos.

While weighting her she released some eggs. Later I squeezed out even some more.

For these big old girls it is very important that the eggs are released and that they don’t catch fire later. Eggs are not good, but they are one of the biggest reasons that big fish die.

The scale stopped at 40.4kg. Just amazing.

I was so happy that I was able to sort the weighing out safely and that she was still so strong.

We can immediately see by the colour on the top of the head if the fish feels well and it was dark and very strong all the time so I was calm and happy. Especially after Claudio had arrived – he caught her two times before and saw her many times – and I saw a smile on his face because he also realised she was healthy and in such a good condition.

We quickly made videos and photos and after that I released her back to the lake. I was so happy that she swam away so nicely and that she was so strong. After that the emotions hit me.

 

I caught her on a Dynamite Peppered Squid 26mm boilie in combination with 15mm Fluro Squid & Octopus pop up. I fed boilies in size 12, 15, 20 and 26 mm together with Mixed Particles from Dynamite.

 

Fox equipment I used: X4 S 12ft 3lb rod, 14000XC reel, Submerge sinking braid 55lb, Illusion Fluorocarbon leader 0,60 mm, leadcore with 170g Inline lead, Camotex Semi Stiff 35lb hookling and Edges Wide Gape Beaked size 2 hook.

I improved my personal best from 2016 when I caught a 39.8 kg common in Austria to 40.4kg now in Belgium.

So far, I have caught 3 carp in 3 countries just a bit below 40kg, but they already reached way over 40kg before I caught them. So this time I was lucky and the scale finally showed 40 kg+! I also improved my previous world records – now ticking off 10 countries where I’ve had carp over 70lb 11 countries where I’ve had them over 30kg (66lb).

I would like to thank to all Belgium carp anglers.

I was fishing all around Europe and I have never felt so welcomed by the local anglers.

So many Belgium anglers sent me messages with best wishes and offered their help, some of them visited me and shared information with me and I really felt that they really want me to catch the fish.

Sincere thanks to all of you guys, I appreciate it very much.

Big thanks also to my friends Kristof, Jurgen and Claudio for their support and help, to my girlfriend Tina for keeping me company and supporting me, to my family and all friends.

In the end, big thanks to my sponsors Dynamite, Fox, Carp Royal and Carpotronics. Without them none of this would be possible!

-Kristof