Fishing the largest volcanic lake in Europe, that sounds quite intriguing to most of us carp angling addicted I believe !! Luckily enough this lake happens to be in Italy, my home country, in the north end of Lazio region and his name is Bolsena. Surrounded by green hills and beautiful medieval town this lake also feature two islands and a total surface of 113,5 square kilometres with a maximum depth of 151 meters !
Unfortunately over the last few years the population of carp in this lake has been decimated by professional fisherman, but the mother nature is really doing her best to keep this environment alive and every now and then is still possible to have some amazing sessions, like it was back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.
When fishing this kind of waters the weather is key, and as you can imagine my biggest concern before leaving home was exactly that…forecasts indicated rain, no problem with that, but the rain would have been later replaced by the north wind and believe me, you don’t want to be there on the lake shores when the northern winds picks up !! Anyway, everything was already planned so I left home anyway hoping for a last-minute change of the weather. Alessandro and Moreno two local carp angler and good friends of mine were already on the lake waiting for me with the boat ready to go out looking for the right spot.
Luckily enough the weather forecasts proved to be quite wrong and the first day we were able to enjoy a beautiful and warm winter sun and a gentle breeze while setting up our traps. The area we were fishing was literally infested from thick weed that was covering the whole water column from the bottom to the surface, but fishing at range between 170 to 250 meters we were able to find some good clear spot where to drop our rigs.
2 hours into the session and one alarm started to scream, I was already fighting the first carp of the trip ! Because of the conditions it was mandatory to get out on the boat to land the fish, so I did with the help of my friends and after a super exciting fight I was finally able to admire a beautiful and large common in the bottom of my net !
From the following day the weather started to turn bad, but not that bad as forecasted few days before so we’ve been battling rain and wind yes, but nothing really serious so we were able to fish properly till the end of the session catching many other good carp, what an incredible session !! Days spent in a mega beautiful lake with awesome friends while catching hard fighting wild carp…I couldn’t ask for more really !! A truly unforgettable session, and for sure one day I’ll be back in the VOLCANO.
