The Most Infuriating Fish in the World

No, its not, as everyone will tell you, mullet.

It's asp.

A few years ago when I was feeder fishing on the Ijssel, I kept seeing fish being attacked in exactly the same spot all evening. I eventually packed up and took the spinning rod down to where the commotion had been taking place and hooked two in ten minutes. Easy.

A mate who lives in France then told me asp in his river were near on uncatchable. Really, I said, I thought they were easy. Oh dear, talk about tempting fate.

I caught several last year, but they were by no means easy. This trip, on many ocassions I've had fish all round me, crashing in to bait fish with fury, again and again. Some are very big fish indeed, but I must have cast thousands of times without even a sniff. On the Ijssel I never saw anyone else catch one either. 

The most intense activity is often either side of dawn. When you see it you think you can't fail. Or at least you do at the beginning.

I was speaking to a bloke from Belgium who is sponsored by Westin, obviously a decent angler. We got talking. Asp ? Oh, he said, totally unpredictable. He said he rarely goes out specifically to catch them because if they not interested you have no chance.

He takes along asp lures and if they're "on", then he'll make the most of it.

I'd spent ages this trip trying to catch one, but within an hour of arriving at our place on the Waal I got one. A small one of a couple of pounds, but a start.

A few days later I noticed prey fish being hit in the ultra shallow, weedy bay and returned later in the evening with the spinning rod, loaded with a small surface lure.

It was calm, sunny evening, although they'd been no surface activity.

Out of the blue a huge eruption of water fifteen yards out. The cast was accurate and the lure was hit almost immediately. All hell was let loose in the shallow water as the fish crashed through the weedbeds. 

As usual, it was a brief but furious fight.

A real clonker of an asp around the 8lb mark. Wow.

I moved a bit further along and on the first cast a fish gave chase to the lure, chomping and crashing and eventually hammered the lure as it launched itself out the water. God, I wish we had these fish in the UK.

Really pleased to catch  a couple after struggling to catch anything on the lures for a while.

A lovely evening.