Dutch carp angler Ben Voltijn has been in touch to tell us he had settled an old score in the shape of another absolutely stunning old mirror from his home country. Superb angling Ben!
On a big pit, in the south part of the Netherlands swims a stunning looking, old, very rare pattern scaled mirror, called Bella Betsy. My first attempt at catching her was in 2004. That year I really had a good season, catching all the big fish there, some even twice! Then at the end of that season I lost a big fish after a hard fight, the heavy 30lb line was cut by razor sharp iron of concrete… was it Bella Betsy? Another carp angler who caught her a couple of weeks after my losing fish said that there was a hook mark in her mouth from a recent loss!
Hearing this my world was in tatters… caught all of them except Betsy… winter took hold and the next try was in next spring 2005, unfortunately they stocked the pit that year with loads of small carp, and I was fed up cathing all of these baby carp, without making a good chance of taking out the last biggun. So I decided to leave it for what it was and I
gave up!
Then this year, 7 years after, I decided to have another try and hopefully the young stockies are a lot bigger and smarter. First seeing the fish was priority number one, to be sure she was alive. This was because she hadn’t been caught for at least a year I had to be sure she was alive and kicking before making plans again.
First glimse of the fish came 2 weeks ago and straight away I tried to trick Betsy with my old hinge stiff link pop-up presentation with a barrel shape 16 mm pop-up right in front were I could see it all happen. In the shallow clear water, she swam straight to the pop-up made a few inspections and turned to away. Why? In my opinion there was something with the 2 inch pop-up, maybe she didn’t like it at all? I was fishing pop-ups 90% of my
fishing in 2004/2005… and now I could see it with me own eyes she refused it!
The good thing was, she was very interested in my bait and to me she wasn’t spooked by the end tackle. So straight away I decided to prebait the spot heavy with boilies and made 3 rods ready with bottem bait combi-rig presentations. 3 days later after only 1.5 hours of fishing I had a full on take and after a short battle the old lady fell between the arms of my net. This after so many years she pops-up so easily! Then I screamed loud; “She’s in the net!!!”
Well another dream come true… 42lb 4oz.
End-tackle:
5 ft of ESP leadcore (camo) helicopter style attched to a 2oz Atomic green bottle lead.
Combi-rig material used:
Large Uni-link ring swivel with 5 inch of 18lb SoftGhost attached to 18lb Sink-link and size 8 Curve-shank hook.
