Daren Welton takes a carp fishing trip to the Canary Islands


With the Olympic’s now firmly behind me and work returning to some sort of normality I decided to take a well earned break from it all and book a nice week’s holiday in Gran Canaria with my girlfriend Jo.

There was a reason we had chosen the Canary Islands for our holidays this year. My girlfriend used to work out there organising, would you believe Carp Fishing Tours and had remained good friends with Dave and Alison Beecham who now run Canary Island Carp Fishing Tours.

Dave and Ali’s work is well documented on their fantastic website (Carp Gran Canaria.com) and It’s well worth taking the time to log on to this site. Not only is it full of all things Carpy Canaria style but also hosts lots of facts and figures relating to the different holiday packages that they run through the course of the year. There is also some really good HD footage of the fishing and videos to download.

We contacted Dave and Ali before we went to make some arrangements to meet up and catch up on old times over a few beers. As you can imagine I was like a kid at Christmas anticipating fishing in such a wonderful Island and getting stuck into a few of those Scaly Mountain Mirrors that Lake Chira holds...

It was the 10th September when we met up and I decided after talking to Dave to book one of his day trips to the Lake. This consists of Dave meeting you at your chosen location (anywhere in Gran Canary) he knows the island like the back of his hand and will often meet you at your Hotel/Apartment. There are no tackle requirements as he supplies everything you need for the day, If you like your own personnel terminal tackle i.e. rigs etc. then you can always take them with you.

On my day trip Dave picked Jo and I up from our Apartment. We had to make another stop on rout to the mountains to pick up two German anglers who had also booked up to fish on that day. After the meeting and greeting we all set off for the lake. The drive up the mountain was nothing short of spectacular with small winding roads leading you right up to the lake, the views where amazing and to be honest we all said that just the tour of the mountain would be a good day out in itself!

When we arrived at the drop off point we collected the rest of the tackle required and made our way to the lake while Dave went and got the bait and boat. We had all the rods ready to rock by the time he arrived back. Basic rigs on lead clips where the order of the Day with Dave’s ethos on not over complicating anything. With the size of the lake and the nature of Its surroundings a lot of the Chira carp have never seen a hook before and are still very naive which of course, makes the fishing a lot easier. Two balanced Tigers on a basic No-Knot completed the rigs. I must admit that I did add a couple of sprays of Richworth’s XLR8 to my nut combo as from past results in the UK I know this complements Tigers very well giving off a nice meaty, nutty aroma!

All of the rods where dropped on spots by Dave from the boat followed by a good helping of particle, again nothing fancy, although I know Dave does add a few tweaks to the mix (wink, wink). Once the rods where sorted we were left to reflect back on the journey, the beautiful surroundings and Dave’s humour, he’s a top man and a proper old school carper from deepest, darkest, Kent so if you like hearing all the old stories back in the day then Dave’s your man! Lunch was served mid-afternoon and washed down with nice cold drinks/beers which was more than welcome considering the temperature (42 degrees).

The action started with fish showing over the baited areas, the mad thing about this was as they were boshing out the sound was echoing around the mountain which sounded fantastic and really made you sit up. We decided between us that we had six rods and three anglers so we would take it turns with the runs, basically the first angler has six rods then when he has had a run the second angler has the six rods and so on, it’s a nice fair way of sharing out the session, well it worked out for me and my new German friends Hans and Constantine.

Hans was the first one in with a scaly mirror of approx. 16lbs, next was Constantine with a nice 19lb scaly mirror and finally it was my turn with a nice fish of 28lb, quite funny really as they seemed to be getting bigger and bigger as the day went on. It did end up 2-1 to the Germans but Dave and I was just thankful that it didn’t go to penalties again!! Lol

When you consider that you are fishing in depths of water at an average of 28 feet you realise why these fish hang on so well. It must of taken me a good 15-20 minutes to land my fish, the fight being nice and long, deep and powerful.

The fishing just got better and better as the day went on, all this on a day trip it which I feel is real value for money. Dave can virtually guarantee you fish on your session. The week sessions on lake Chira average 50-60 fish hits and the size of these fish is still pretty much unknown...
The journey down the mountain was equally as spectacular as on the way up but this time we could reflect back on the fishing experience we had just left behind us.

If you feel like you need to get away from it all and would like to experience Carp Fishing in a different way then I can’t recommend Dave and Ali’s Canary Island Carp Fishing Tours highly enough.

Happy Hunting,
Daren.