World Carp Classic - Official Global Website
Lake Bolsena 2nd - 8th September 2012

 
First 2 weeks of May 2009 in France, Lac de Madine in night fishing zone, Montsec:
peg 32 a couple of Check rep. WCC 2008
peg 33 Hans Sissingh, Team Carp Connections WCC 1998 / 2009
peg 34 (The € 200 pay peg) Victor Selic WCC 2008 / Team Hutchies 2009
Peg 35 Holger Kicco from Germany WCC 2010…

It’s been like this for days. Rain poring from the skies, a water temperature of 13C, winds coming from all directions and thunder and hail storms keep hitting the surface. I’ve been living in my waders for days and the forecast tells me it won’t be much better for the next few days. Planning a session comes with a bit of luck, it seems I’m out of it... the carp are not ready to spawn and they haven’t entered my bay yet.

Last year at the opening of the legal night fishing season I was lucky and caught many fish, some large too. Fishing was fun then. This year I’ve been struggling to catch even a few small fish. The little catfish kept on buggin’ me and while drilling one of these monsters it picked up 100m of old braid and disaster struck...

About 60 swans, heavily feeding on the weeds in front of my eyes, kept picking up my lines during day and night and they messed up many hours of hard work rowing out in the hard winds to set up perfectly.

In short, this first week of the season was not very successful and I only caught a few fish. I crossed my fingers for the next half of the session because the surface temperature had gone up to 18C already!

On the Nonsard end of the lake, peg 31 even delivered a 29kg but Madine doesn’t really market the competition (have you seen it announced anywhere?) and the big fish was put back straight away. These captures kept me motivated. 
Then at 05.00 on 9th May the pike fishing season announced itself by the noise of the cars and trailers steering towards the end of our peninsula to let their boats into the lake. Much earlier I had pulled in my lines and positioned my rigs on the pre-baited secure spots just in front of the reeds on my bank, taking no chances.

At 08.00 I heard someone screaming on the left hand side. I thought it was at Victor’s peg. 34 but then I heard the Germans shout “This is mein platz, vous etes too close”. I hurried to his swim and found a pikers boat no more then 50 meters from the shore with a fat man with a big hat standing straight up in his boat facing the shore. Victor was also present and he called the Garde de pêche. The fishermen in the boat kept on dragging their lines and didn’t take too much notice of us. Victor called them to ask if they knew the rules, they had to stay 200 meters from the night fishing zone, and were far too close. Instead of a ‘sorry for that, I’ll move on’ the fat man started to shout back. When he started to talk about the number of years he has fished at Madine and about us having to leave Victor couldn’t stay polite any more and told him to get lost.

After an argument, Victor told them to tell their story to the Garde de Peche and that he had called them, the men went on and all went quiet…

Our guard dog, a Fishing teckel, dared to come out of the bivvy again.

Back at peg 34 Victor made us a coffee and the invited Germans joined us too. Just when coffee was poured in the cups one of Victors’ Delkims pumped a sound, then again and again…“Signe the merde” Victor said “Bloody Swan”. But this wasn’t a swan at all. The fat man had made up his mind and decided not to respect the zone at all. After the incident he kept on trolling and now had entered Victor’s swim. This time Victor could not be polite anymore. Victor jumped in his ‘ready to go’ boat and sailed to the piker during which he taught us some French words that are not in the dictionary. Reeling in Victor found out his line was cut and he tried to find the other end with the old rake he uses to clean the weeds.
I have not seen if the Electro had cut the line or the Fat man had cut it but as far as I know braid does not break easily when picked up by a motor. Both ‘gentlemen’ shouted at each other and both threatened to have the Garde de Peche kick the other off the lake. The Garde, however, was nowhere near.

Finally the man left and Victor continued his search for the line, moaning about the price of braid and how he had paid 200 Euro for his swim, the lake being 1100 hectare and the fisherman cutting lines on purpose…moan moan moan.

A few days later I decided to leave early. The annoying swans, pikers at 05.00 every morning, the bad weather, the Garde (who told me I couldn’t set a fire to keep warm) and the fish I didn’t catch…they had all beaten me…

Today I was called by a client of mine who had reserved peg 34. for next weekend. “Hans, did you know the whole night fishing zone has been closed down permanently?” I was surprised. Normally you expect to be the first to hear such news, even before it is officially announced. I called the President of the AAPPMA federation and he confirmed the news. He told me he had had a complaint about the fisherman on peg 34 and he had decided not only to close the zone but also to withdraw the permit of Mr. Victor Selic. He told me Victor already has a record for threatening people from last season. I told him I remembered that story.

“It happened the week before the World Carp Classic press session was organised. Madine had promised to keep the pegs available but had done nothing to reserve them so I had placed some brand new JRC bivvy’s on these pegs. I had to leave these bivvy’s out of my sight for a moment so I had asked Victor, who was fishing next to them, to keep an eye on them for me.

Regular fishermen arrived and saw the bivvy’s but no fishermen around so they decided to ask the neighbour, Victor, what was going on. Victor was in his bed. They entered his swim and after asking about the bivvy Victor explained to them about the press, World Carp Classic and all. They didn’t respect Victor’s privacy though and entered his bivvy porch telling him that he had no right to occupy these pegs this way. They were right, Victor did the best he could, as did I of course, but Madine should have announced what was going on with the pegs.

Victor however told these lads to get out of his bivvy and off his peg. I was not present and don’t know exactly what happened there. The men made a proper complaint both about Victor occupying pegs and him threatening them. This is the report”.

However, the President said that was enough for him. He had had two official complaints about Mr. Selic threatening other fishermen with weapons… I explained it to him and asked what weapon Victor had used during the last incident because I was present at the time. The answer…“it was a rake”…

I understand Victor is not a lucky man. He did the best he could being only 50kg and just a small, handicapped man. He will probably never get his permit back for he simply gets angry too quickly as soon as he realises he might win an argument and he shouldn’t threaten people.

People can reserve pegs with my agency. For the upcoming period I have several reservations for peg 34. So I asked the President why he closed the whole night fishing zone when he could have closed this bay for pikers and left the carpers in peace.

“Mr. Sissingh, we can not make any exceptions. Our hands are tied, this is the only thing I can do. Carpers simply don’t respect the rules, they row out too far and sometimes even over 600 meters.” I asked him why he was punishing the group for the errors of an individual? His response was that he does not have enough Gardes de Peche to maintain the rules…
This we have seen! If the Garde had respected the phone call from Victor with regard to the Germans they would have noticed the piker breaking the rules. If they had come when the piker was still in peg 35 Victor would still have his permit and the zone would still be open.

I leave all judgement up to our readers. Is it Victor’s fault the zone has been closed down because he got impatient and rude? or is the Garde de peche mistaken for never showing up? Is the federation in favour of pikers or have the carpers gone too far? For me it’s obvious.

Click on this picture to find the exclusive picture of ‘Fat man standing’ and judge for yourself who broke the rules and who should have had their permit withdrawn. Victor wasn’t even given a chance to defend himself. The letter in his mailbox arrived as a surprise. What is the AAPPMA up to? Will we be able to fish for carp in the future or will they finally close all night fishing zones? What will the consequences be for the World Carp Classic?
Please do write your comments on the WCC forum because the number of comments might change the opinion of those who are deciding who to side with – pikers or carpers.

Hans Sissingh

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