FRENCH TRIP

     My friend Bob & myself decided to take a foreign fishing trip we chose to fish the mighty river Ebro in   

     Spain, after a little research we came across the river Soane in France and changed our plans.

     The Soane is not as well known as the Ebro never the less has produced cat fish to over 160lb & huge carp.

     So we set our sights for Macon a smashing town in the wine regions of France. On board we had a 14ft

     canoe a fish finder and a ton of fishing gear & bait. 5 or 600 miles later we arrived at our destination. 

     We got some fishing license from a tackle dealer in Macon they cost us £15 each, we found a camp site,

     we had beer plenty of supplies all we had to do was fish for ten days.

We spent three days searching  for places to catch bait and places to fish for cats. One spot I liked the look    

 of turned out to be a nightmare, we lost 5 spools of fire line twice to speedboats but we recovered  most of  it.

 We got into a routine of bait fishing from about 10am until about 3pm then transport the bait to the chosen 

 catfish swim by car then fish till when ever. Livebait was easy to catch when we located them, mostly Bream

 a few  Roach and Perch. I hooked a big fish while bait fishing which didn't know it was hooked it swam up and 

 down our swim feeding on our groundbait I reckon, the fish got spooked and swam off, we watched my spool

 empty then the hook pulled, carp or a cat probably. Anyway cat fishing was hard work, we would row our 6

 baits out and watch the wash from a coaster drag them around the river, a bit of a pain, the water level would 

 rise and fall about 2ft when a coaster or some barges went by, which was fairly common.

    About the 6th day all was quiet when Bobs bite alarm sounded, Bob was asleep, there were no boats coming, 

   I shouted to Bob he got up and struck his rod, I said ya got one on Bob he said yep, you sure its not weed I 

   replied, he said something like "its a flippin fish Nige" you sure "corse im flippin sure" 10 minuets later there

   was this huge marble shaded tadpole thrashing at our feet. I hauled the giant cat up the bank. We weighed it 

  and was gob smacked by the size of this 82lb moggy. It didn't matter what happened now, we had achieved our

  goal. The next day I had three runs and caught a kitten of about 10-15lb. On the last day Bob caught a Zander

  of about 8lb, so the final tally was two cats one zander a hand full of 3-4lb bream loads of small stuff. We had

  7 runs from our target spices, we also saw some monster carp in the river next time maybe.

             The tackle we used was uptide rods, multiplier reels, 30lb fire line 60lb mono hook links varying in 

               lengths. We put baits on the surface, mid water, on the bottom, you name it we tried it. We had runs

               from surface, mid water and bottom baits. I believe hook choice was responsible for most missed runs.

             With small hooks after a run the hook had turned back into the bait, this happened twice, with big hooks 

              the fish would reject the bait. We needed leads from 2oz to 8oz to fish up to 120yds. Depths varied with 

              lots of deep channels and shallow bars. We found areas up to 30ft deep, the river averaged 20ft.

              If you plan to fish the Soane for cats you really need a boat a fishfinder is useful too. Anyway we went

              home with massive smiles and the satisfaction that we had caught what we came for in a big way.

                                                                            GOOD FISHING