Danny Fairbrass - La Gomera The Lake That Time Forgot

Danny Fairbrass heads to 1500ft above sea level in search of prehistoric monsters!

La Gomera is a smaller island South West of Tenerife

Like a lot of my fellow anglers, I had seen the section of the Nash DVD that showed Alan and Kevin's trip to a mountainous region of the Canary Islands, where they catch a couple of stunning carp in pretty prehistoric conditions. The fish in particular caught my eye and knowing the Canary Islands to have pleasant temperatures, even in the depths of the English winter, made the whole thing the perfect remedy for the winter blues.

At the moment none of my tickets at home have particularly good winter form. Having fished many hard winters in the UK, my resolve has dwindled in the face of three months of fourteen-hour nights and almost no bites. Day trips to Walthamstow break the boredom and offer some amazing fishing even in winter, if the complex is fishing well. But the shorter session times meant I now had to wait two hours to get in the gate if I was to miss the rush-hour traffic and would have to leave the venue at 5pm, right on rush hour as well doubling the journey time. Most importantly, you didn't get to fish the first few hours of darkness, which historically had been the best time in winter on there, it's never easy is it boys?

So, a weeklong trip to South Africa in January with my best bud, Andy, was my first fix since early December and the Canaries was my second and only other trip in three months; a stark contrast from my personal spring campaigns of three nights a week and my substantial filming commitments in the summer. But, it was by design, longer sessions in far-off lands, chasing the sun and some large, and most importantly, stunning, fish.

Donaldson Dam in South Africa is a stunning place and with guaranteed thirty degree days and the average fish over thirty pounds it was a no brainier to keep going back year after year. The service from Gary and Eva at Donaldson was the best I have experienced on any holiday venue and made the day of stripping down of my kit and the nine hour flight more that bearable. The fishing was hampered by a mass of drifting weed, which we had not encountered before, but we caught some stunning fish and enjoyed the great facilities and hospitality, 2016 is already booked!

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La Gomera is a smaller island South West of Tenerife, so I flew into Tenerife from Gatwick. I took my rods including a spare/spod rod, reels including spools holding sinking braid and spare spools with 15lb line on, buzzers, tackle box, extra line/braid, floats for potentially lifting the line, Rainbow style, plus a host of head torches and other spares. I like to be prepared for almost anything, so I paid for 40kg of luggage in the hold, plus my rod tube, which I had to pay for a minimum of 20kg so I stuffed long bank sticks in just in case we needed to jack the rods up and a host of high-attract hook baits, yet it remained well under weight so I paid more than I needed to.

In my hand luggage was all my camera kit with clothes packed all around. Providing it fits in the cage at check-in then the weight is pretty much immaterial. Clothing-wise we had been warned to take mostly winter kit, which surprised me, and thank god we did. I got down to a T-shirt for an hour over the whole week and it pissed with rain at some point almost every day! Even the locals in the bars were saying it was the worst weather they had seen in February for many years.

It wasn't that cold but just windy as hell, super misty and almost never sunny, so we kept as many layers on as possible. My North Face lightweight down jacket and Korda Polar Fleece trousers really saved me and the shorts I took never saw the light of day. Waterproof boots are a must and the new Korda waterproof high-top trainers passed the test with flying colours. The only thing worse than cold feet is cold and wet feet!

The journey was protracted because I had to wait for one of my best pals, Murphy, who lives in Ibiza, to fly in via Barcelona. He had to fly into Tenerife North and get a bus down to Tenerife South where I had arrived. We would be collected from there and taken to the near by port of Los Cristianos. So, I spent a rather boring four hours in arrivals on top of a four-hour flight and we still had the ferry and final hours drive to negotiate, so all-in-all more traveling time than the SA trip!

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We were picked up at the airport by a friend of our guide Ian, a very nice ex-pat called Pete. Ian had gone ahead to set up the bivvies, as we were arriving in the dark. In hindsight I wish Ian had stayed and waited for us as despite Pete's welcoming manner, it would have been nice to get into Ian's van from the start, this would have avoided any confusion at the ferry port, but having a fluent Spanish speaker in Murphy meant it was no bother really. There are two ferries to Gomera, the Olsen ferry is the fast one, and the best one to get on, it leaves later but arrives before the other one. Lugging the kit up the stairs was a bit of a bind as my shoulder and bicep had stopped working since before Christmas but Murph lent a hand. Being dropped in a foreign place for the first time can be a bit unnerving even for a seasoned traveller, but going with Ian would have also saved us 68 euro each return ferry trip, which on top of the flights, the cost of the holiday, food and villa for a shower was mounting up to not far off the cost of the South Africa trip.

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Once off the other end after a short and flat one-hour ferry crossing our guide, Ian, a thoroughly nice Scotsman with a broad smile and welcoming manner, met us. He had discovered the lake a few years previously after being tipped off by someone who had seen huge fish swimming in it. A quick recce mission just listening with no rods confirmed the lake had monsters in it and Ian and his friends returned soon after to bank some sunning fish to 64lb. There were several fifties caught and a least one other 60 in those early trips and it was clear from the off that these fish had grown to this size totally naturally. Rumour had it that the King of Spain stocked carp into many of the reservoirs across the Canaries and, left to their own devices, some of these fish have grown to huge sizes, others have bred rapidly, keeping the average size low, but this water had a high volume of bass, a predator that would keep the carp fry down and so help what remains to grow huge.

The most attractive thing to me was the amazing scale patterns and dark colours of these fish, every one was a prize just like my personal fishing back home. Murph and I had agreed that if we banked one of these creatures in our week together it would be considered a result, whomever caught it. We hoped for more of course, but judging by other captures, landing a fish or two per week in spring was good so in winter with the weather well and truly against us. One landed fish would be a result.

After grabbing a burger in the town square, right in the middle of an amazing festival where all the locals covered each other in flour and wore only white, we were up into the mountains. The climb was sheer, as was the drop off the side of the road, with only a tiny low barrier for protection. I am not a good traveller or good with heights so had to stop half way so I could repo to the front of the van so I didn't regurgitate my burger on the way up!

It was pitch black when we arrived at the lake, save for a few street lamps on the roads bordering the reservoir. We trudged down the steep path from the road to the bivvies with a heavy mist glowing in the street lamps. So heavy we couldn't see the other side of the lake 150 yards away!

We had a cuppa and listened for a while and then hit the sack, the Nash bivvies were more than adequate but the seeping bags left a bit to be desired. Both needed a good wash and I had to swap with Murph cos I couldn't get into my one, it was an old army type bag that zipped up the middle and fortunately the svelt Murph could slip into it, just. We slept like babies anyway after the long day (I had left home at 4am and it was now 10pm).

We awoke to alarms set for 6am to listen for fish but with strong winds right in our faces and super-heavy mist you couldn't stand out in it for long without getting soaked. So we waited till 7.30am when it was just light, even though we still couldn't see the other side. Amazingly, we started to hear fish and soon after saw the remnants of a large 'something' rolling on the surface.

I saw one plain as day come half way out the water, it was a good thirty and right in my swim, only 50-60 yards off the bank. At that time I had no idea what depth or snags it was rolling over. The lake is deep, super-deep in fact, and it transpired that the fish had rolled over about 17m or 56ft of water. Short of it there was a flat area of about 9m which would be spot number one! Other fish rolled in the same area and also long in front of Murphy, approximately 20m off the opposite bank.

This was the area of most activity so we noted where we had seen shows and then put out marker floats later on and sculled around the floats with the echo sounder to ascertain the steepness of the gradient the rig would be sitting on. I have found this to be critical on steep-sided lakes like this, the flatter the area the better, and the larger the flat spot the better too, mainly for line angles. It was 9m or 29ft only 40 yards out and I was fishing on a large flat area! In front of Murphy it was 35ft deep 10yds out going down to 17m in the middle, then 20m deep off the cliff face opposite, rising back up to 9m to the right of the cliff face, which was where we had seen at least half of the 13 shows that morning before rowing out.

Others were spread around the middle over 20m of water with one or two off the dam wall straight ahead, which went down to 25m or 82ft at the base of the dam with no ledges, just a 45 degree gradient, all in concrete! This dictated where I could fish, putting two short and one long between Murph's area and the dam wall on a thin ledge of 8m deep water near where we had seen fish. Looking and not fishing at first light told us a lot about the whereabouts of the fish and definitely put us on the right track from day one. However, it took us longer to perfect our baiting and finally get chances...

Particles had, without doubt, caught the lion’s share of the fish on the lake summer and winter. Unfortunately the hemp and maize mix ready for us at the lake had already gone off, as it had been cooked too far in advance of our arrival. Fortunately, Ian knew of a grain supplier on Gomera so we got dry maize and started it on soak a day into the session. I added ground local chorizo sausage to flavour the maize, it's spicy, meaty and oily, perfect for enhancing the taste of the bland maize. To this I added lots of salt and a spice mix I found in a local supermarket, plus I added a few beans that also looked like they would suck up the flavour as well.

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Whilst this lot was soaking overnight I used the tigers I had brought with me, ready-soaked, along with plenty of corn from the supermarket and a sprinkling of chopped banoffee boilies. I’d chopped these in half so they wouldn’t roll down the steep slopes.

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On the first morning with rods in the water fish showed over all three rigs and I really thought I was going to get one, but the bobbins didn't move. Murph had them show on him too so it was unlikely we had got it totally wrong, maybe they just weren't feeding yet. I used COG leads we converted on the bank, using 5oz flat pears on all rods with a Pineapple Goo'd Banoffee slow-sinker on one rod, half a tiger and piece of pink corn on another, and half a tiger and piece of yellow corn on the third. Murph started with his favourite boilie and pellet stringer that works so well for him on the River Ebro and a stack of three tigers on the last rod; basically all bases where covered.

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Having had fish show all over me for the first two hours of daylight without action spurred me to change hook baits. Two grains of freshly cooked chorizo maize and one grain of slow-sinking yellow IB maize went out on the second night; I also moved the rod closer to the most concentrated area of activity, only 50 yards straight out in front. I scoured the area with the echo before placing the rig on the new area, actually Murph placed the rig for me because the Zodiac inflatable we had was too small for me to row effectively. He is amazing in any vessel, from this tiny one right up to a super yacht, which he captains off the coast of Ibiza in the summer.

This new rod produced the first proper take of the week at 7am the following morning. Sadly, I had placed the rig too close to the snag-infested drop off into 17m of water and the fish was snagged before I even go to the rod, I was gutted. I pulled hard then slackened off and the rig came free minus the last inch of hook link. I should have been using the 50lb Kamo hook link, but instead I had 20lb Hybrid Stiff on, maybe that didn't matter but I stepped everything up from then on; 50lb hook link on all rods and 70lb Kable XT leadcore behind the COG lead. I also changed all three rods to maize tipped off by a grain of slow-sinking IB Maize as this had produced the bite.

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Three rods were all fished close the next night, further away from the drop off and closer to me, Murph did a fine job of dropping them all dead right at dusk. I would wind them round the distance sticks and clip them up just as I had with the marker rod so I knew the spot was clear of snags. When we hit the clip he would carefully drop them over the side to make sure the softer Kamo link didn't tangle round the COG system and leadcore. I could then feel the lead hit bottom just like a normal cast.

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Nothing happened overnight and right on bite time, disaster struck. The flock of geese that inhabit the lake and make themselves a damn nuisance day and night by hovering round our lines, took off racing for the road just in case a car they saw was actually stopping to feed them. One of them took one of the rods clean off the rests, definitely dragging the lead out of position. So I opted to repo the rod with Murph's help, I got him to throw just half a tin of corn around the rig when it hit he clip, then we both settled back to bed as the chance of seeing a fish show now we had been out in the boat just after first light was almost nil. At 11am right out of the blue, the rod we had redone at 9am absolutely melted off. We were both in bed but got to the rod quickly, we slid down the treacherous slope towards the boat mooring, Murph got us out over the deep water expertly, fortunately the fish that hadn't done a lot till then, but, all of sudden it well and truly woke up, dragging us around the deeps for a few minutes.

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Eventually, after dragging the whole tip under the water several times, I got control of the fish and started to see light-coloured flanks in the clear surface layers of the deep, dark abyss. It was scaly one (surprise, surprise) and wasn't a monster but still rucked like mad. Fortunately for me it did go in the net on the first attempt. Then I realised my left bicep didn't have enough power to actually lift the net so I dragged it back towards me in a state of panic and shock. Murph lent forward and gave me a smacker right on the cheek, a moment I will never forget!

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We sculled back to shore carefully, once on the bank the fish was revealed as a truly stunning creature, easily one of the best carp I have ever caught. The weight was immaterial but for the record it went 33lb. With pictures and video done we spent a few moments looking at the prize once more to take it all in, before it slipped away into the depths. We had adapted, the learning curve was steeper than anything we could have imagined. We moved quickly through tactics, baits and spots to get to this success together, working non-stop, day and night, in consistently horrendous conditions.

Three nights into the six-night session and we now expected more. Murph moved onto maize hook baits on all rods and I obviously copied my approach from night three into night four, yet no bites came. It was apparent that the fish had slowly drifted away from my area after the bite so I baited the long area without fishing it, which the fish reacted to instantly. The trouble was the slope on the far side was much steeper than I had originally thought and it appeared obvious why I hadn't caught from the long rod before. When I had fished it at the start of the week the bobbin had kept slipping back towards me, suggesting the lead was slipping down under the weight of the sinking braid and more likely the strong cross winds that frequently battered our position 1500 feet about sea level.

I rowed the area extensively during the day, struggling against the wind in the little Zodiac, the biggest problem was the oars kept hitting my thighs because the boat was too small for me. I did work out that you had to row right up to the far bank, turn around and then row directly away from the bank to get a real picture of the gradient. What I first though was fairly flat was actually very steep and only fishable from the far bank with the line running down the slope, since I had no means of doing this over to a bank stick on the far bank and rowing was so hard anyway I opted to fish in the deep water at the bottom of the slope around 150 yards from my rods and maybe 30 yards off the far bank at the lake’s widest point. As always, the actual drop-off was festooned in old trees. If you followed the lie of the land down to the water’s edge and the vegetation on it you could get a picture of what lay beneath, before the valley was flooded. Basically, every slope was tree-lined and mega rocky too, making landing a fish if you ever got a bite not for the faint hearted.

At the bottom of the slope, in 20m of water, it was flat, firm and well fishable, deeper than I wanted to fish but not deep for the lake. Remember, the deepest part I had found was another 5m deeper. It was also winter and although the water was above 10 degrees its was still cold for these fish who experience 40-degree heat all summer long. Now it was down to almost freezing on some nights and never really got above 15 degrees on the best afternoons but, most importantly, fish had shown over these depths ever since we’d got there. This also gave me the opportunity to rest the area that had produced the bites previously, and with tiny amounts of bait placed fresh on those spots I was confident the fish would come back with no lines or rigs to scare them away. It's something I try to do on most long sessions so areas don't get fished out.

Even though Murph and I got all the rods out quickly and quietly nothing happened that night, and the fish that had been showing over the long area for two days didn't show the morning the rigs were out there. In spite of facing only occasional angling pressure, they still know when they are being fished for, of that I am certain.

I was now having to keep the rods fished super low and tight to the bank as possible in daylight hours, shielding them from the frequent and devastating flights of the geese flock as they raced back and forth to the road as cars passed by. Every few days one car would stop and feed the geese so they rushed for every car in between. In fact, they sat right in the road waiting a lot of the time, but one flock stayed round our rods just in case we dropped any bait. You could never predict when they would do it so keeping the tips at water level in the day was essential, then moving the whole set up high onto the tip of the point for the night because the geese didn't fly in the dark, instead they swam close to the margins which would have taken the low lines out in the dark. The constant swapping did wear me down, rushing to move them before first light so they weren't taken out right on bite time, and standing by them in last few minutes of darkness so nothing swept through them at this critical time. Poor Murph had his rods taken out several times as well, one of them cut him off at the tips as he was using mono, fortunately he had spare spools to replace the lost line.

I went back the close spots for the last night having left the long rods in 20m of water until the last moment, and with Murph's expert help, they all went out perfectly. In the afternoon prior to moving back in close I finally did what I should have done on the first day, used two marker floats, leaving one on the spot with the other being pulled past it to accurately gauge the angle of the slope. It showed the left rod that had stayed close in the whole time was on the flattest area, so I was staggered that it hadn't produced a bite, especially as fish had showed near the area more consistently than any other.

Looking back, I think the gradient of the slope, and so the angle of the line, was a key factor in getting a bite or not. I suspect Murphy's lines were more visible than mine as the topography in front of him steered his approach towards the far-bank shallows rather than the steep slope in his margin. The constant fish activity over there could also not be ignored and I think he was right to stick with it as Kevin had got bites from a similar area, albeit in better conditions.

On the final morning it looked good. All three rods were fished short on the bite spots. It was still misty but much calmer and at 8am, with three hours to go, a long, black forty-plus mirror showed right over my left rod. We stretched the fishing out to the last minute but no takes came. Those last moments were proper exciting when another fish showed right on the spot, definitely spurring me on to go back, but not under current circumstances.

The snags on the marginal slopes had to be removed, trees poke out of the water right under the rod tips so nothing could be landed from the bank without risk of being done in the trees at the last moment. The snags we couldn't see other than on the echo sounder were even more of a problem. I suspect if we had got six bites we would have lost three of them, which would have broken us mentally. I saw Kevin and Alan lost four of the six they hooked, I think they fished it in May two years previously. Ian, our guide, has promised a diver friend of his from Tenerife is on hand to do it asap, I sincerely hope this happens.

And whilst Ian couldn't do enough to help us and feed us when he didn't have to, it still was roughing it compared to most other holiday venues where you could either drive all your normal kit to the water and so live in relative comfort, or be cooked for on the package deals. Having to pay extra for a chalet just to have a shower pushed an already expensive trip up even higher and with the water so tricky and snaggy too, the whole thing is not for those on a budget or those not used to wild conditions above and below the water.

Make no mistake, the fish are among the most special I have ever seen and the prehistoric, mountainous terrain was spectacular when the mist wasn't hiding it. So I long to go back if the snags are cut out and the facilities improve, which I have suggested to Ian, who to his credit has listened and agreed to improve everything that needs it.

The whole trip with such a great friend as Murphy was a highlight of my fishing career, especially that moment when the fish went in the net. As we sailed away from what looked like an island out of Jurassic Park, we saw the ring of cloud that we had been fishing in all week. We packed up in the pissing down rain, by the time we got to the port it had stopped raining, and by the time we got to Tenerife there were people sunbathing on the beach; we had gone 30 miles but it felt like 3000! We enjoyed the very pleasant sun and 20-degree heat of Tenerife's Los Cristianos, watching the lovely Spanish ladies go by tucking into an amazing lamb dish, if the two could be combined this really would be a winter paradise. I fear rising to 1500 feet above sea level will always get in the way of the winter sun, but if you have the spirit, spring and autumn would be a great time to take this unique water head on!

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