This was our second fishing trip to Orellana, though I spent two weeks here last October as Head Marshall at the World Carp Classic Legacy Event, this was a forerunner to this years World Carp Classic, which has been moved from Madine to Orellana to grow the event. Last year we travelled out to Orellana for the first time in the spring and spent some time looking around and getting to know the area. We fished for 5 days and caught some nice carp, as well as learning about the lake and the fishing itself. Hopefully this year would be more straightforward…not much chance of that!
This year’s trip was a bit more planned, with the travelling but not necessarily the fishing, it had been a huge learning curve last year on all fronts. We took the overnight ferry from Plymouth to Santander; from there it’s a 430-mile drive down to Orellana. The drive is much easier than on UK roads and takes around 7 hours, including a stop. On a separate trip out there a couple of weeks ago, I drove from Brittany in France to Orellana, it’s 900 miles! About Orellana itself, it’s a huge lake. Approx. 34km long, with all the bays, there is a vast amount of bank space. It’s reckoned that available bank space is twice the length of the English Channel. When you are at one of the higher up points looking down onto the lake its mind blowing as to where to even start.
The plan was to spend a couple of days looking around for areas to fish, then spend 6 days fishing. I now know a few locals I can speak with to get up to date info about the fishing. I hit a few snags straight away, the first one being that there was a major carp enduro on at the weekend, which meant most pegs with easy access at the lower end of the lake would be pegged. The second was that it seemed the police were being more active than usual about night fishing, there are only certain areas you are allowed to night fish legally. The third issue was that the fishing was a bit hard, opinions differed as to why that was, some said SVC, others said the extremely hot weather, but it seemed the fishing was a definitely bit hard. All in all, it looked like it was going to be a challenge once again. I spoke with a few anglers who had been here a few weeks earlier, the lake had a massive amount if water through, so much so that the main dam was opened for the first time in 10 years. The lake was still full, though levels were dropping slowly, in the Autumn when we were here it was about 15 foot lower, cars were driving along the dry lake bed. Access wise, it is more difficult to get to some areas with any vehicle, especially my transporter, even though I have had it raised a bit this year, as some of the tracks around the lake are not the best as well as some are gated and padlocked. Watching the locals and the guides, they mostly use boats to access the areas they want to fish, it is something I am going to have to plan for in the future, but it would worry me parking my vehicle up and leaving it for days on end, as it would stand out like a sore thumb. Many years ago, fishing the Orient in France, I had my van broken into when it had been left far from where we were fishing. I have always been wary since then of leaving my vehicle unattended anywhere abroad.
I decided eventually to fish the area I had fished last year, as I thought there would be carp about at some point. It was the entrance to a bay, just to give you an idea of the size of the bay, it was easily twice the size of Pit 6 I fish at home. The lack of anglers in that area suggested it wasn’t fishing very well. Having fished here last year I had good knowledge of the features in front of me, it was just a matter of re-checking with the echo sounder, the lake-bed just dropped away on a steady slope down to 50 foot depth the further straight out I went, to the left I stopped the boat when it was showing 70 feet! This year I had just brought Cream Cajouser boilies and 11mm pellets, with the option to fish plastics as hookbaits if needed, as it turned out, there was very little crayfish activity this year, last year they were a real nuisance. Around 50 tons of crayfish a year are harvested from Orellana!
Last year all the carp caught came from fishing close in, so that’s where I started, fishing depths from 12 feet down to 21 feet, with 3 rods spread down the slope, the smaller carp coming from the deeper area. We were about 2 weeks earlier this year, so the Crayfish pots hadn’t been put in yet, which can be a real nuisance to fish through as there are usually 2 rows around most of the bays. I baited up with the Spod rather than using the boat, the idea being to spread bait around over a large area, this worked well last year. The idea being to keep the carp around longer and looking for food instead of them just passing through. The other thing I learned from last year was to fish PVA bags of pellets and boilies rather than stand-alone hookbaits or pop-ups, this definitely got more bites. There seemed to be less carp around than last year, which would explain why there were less anglers. Of the 6 nights I fished I felt there were only 2 nights I had carp over the baits. As they could be heard crashing in the night. Both of those nights I had runs and landed some nice carp, nothing big but one very nice scaley mirror. I beefed up the hooks I was using as last year I had a few hook pulls due to the points bending over. This year I was using much thicker wire hooks with stronger points, this seemed to do the trick. The runs are absolute screamers, the carp just take off and don’t stop, rods need to be held very securely indeed. Though the action was a bit slow, it’s just a great place to be it is such a beautiful place, there is no noise, no light pollution, it really is wild fishing, there were a couple of storms during the nights, it was magic watching the light shows from the lightening around the mountains. There is also a lot of wildlife around if you look carefully, on this trip we saw a snake hunting and catching a fish, it tuned out to be a Viper, of which there are three main species in Spain, this one was the most venomous, not quite deadly but hospital treatment could be needed! There are Lizards, Scorpions, huge a mount of bird life, we even had a Black Fox around for a couple of nights.
All too soon it was time to pack up and head back to our base, get cleaned up and ready for the trip home. I was already looking forward to the next fishing trip here,. I’ll be back here in the Autumn for the World Carp Classic, sadly no fishing for me then. But it will be interesting to see what the lake throws up with 200 teams from around the world fishing the lake. Hopefully next year I will be able to fish for a couple of weeks, I’ll let you know how I get on.
Andy Murray
