PORTUGAL FISHING

A brief glance at the match fishing over the last two seasons.
My first season was 2014. I just fished the one venue at a place called Retaxo with excellent results, very rarely finishing out of the top two, luckily it was a venue that suited my fishing style. The main species of fish are carp and crucians and in the early days lots of catfish but thankfully these have thinned out now.
In my second season 2015 I wanted to try some new venues and by joining a new angling club Albipesca, have been fishing their local venue at Talaguira, which I have to say has brought me mixed results. Many of the club members have been fishing here on a weekly competition basis for almost twenty years so i am up against it from the start, had a few top three finishes, but it is my first season back on natural waters rather than man made commercials, so i have had to go back to basics as the feeding patterns and tactics on the pole have had to be drastically altered. The carp here seem to average 1 to around 4 kilos but because they are wild fish and not farm reared they go absolutely insane when you hook them so all my elastics have now had to be changed to hollows with pulla kits as I was suffering way too many breakages in the early season. With that now sorted i am finally coming to grips with the fishing.
Usually anything up to 45 kilos is needed to win in four hours in the summer and up to about 25 kilos in the winter. Baits are very simple here mainly corn, worms, maggot and wheat. I have tried meat, bread and pellets but the carp are not that interested, but I do aim to keep trying alternative baits in my practice sessions through the week.
A few pics to whet your appetites.