Rapide Success in Belgium

When fishing deep lakes the fish can often take a while to wake up and warm weather is needed to push them into the shallow zones where they usually have a good feed and get ready for spawning and generally late April and early May is the perfect time! Our Belgian team member Chris de Clercq sees this as an ideal opportunity to hunt out these large wary carp. This spring however, the Belgian weather has been so cold that these areas have not seen much fish activity at all. While waiting for the warmer weather to bring his target water to life he has been fishing a shallower but very busy syndicate lake.

The pressured fish in the crystal clear water are often difficult to catch but close observation gave our Belgian friend enough clues for a successful approach. He only fished short in evening sessions after work to avoid the weekend crowds. He has been fishing one rod with single pop-up on a chod rig made from Adaptive Camo Leadcore, 25lb Rigidity and a size 5 Arma Point SR hook. The other rod was fished using a short section of Reflex braid hidden with a handful of pellets inside a Rapide PVA bag. Both methods are perfect for this shallow, weedy lake because they can be cast towards showing fish and you can be confident that you will always have a perfect presentation, no matter where it lands. So far Chris’s chod rig has nailed a few more than the solid bag but after having a number of fish on the Rapide he believes the once the weed has grown up a little more he expects the PVA bag approach to dominate. Whilst fishing a couple of short evening sessions during the first week of May Chris landed one 20lbs mirror and seven commons between 26lbs and 31.5lbs, proving that he’s got his tactics spot on. Well done Chris!