Vadkan-tó
Near Cserhátsurány, Nógrád county
Lake Vadkan sits near Cserhátsurány in Nógrád county, and the channel has filmed three sessions here: one in spring, one in September and one at the end of summer. The place is wild and deliberately basic — there is no electricity at the swims, so you cannot even charge a lamp, and in spring, with nights near freezing, an unheated bivvy is a serious test.
The key question on this water is range. On the September session it was the warden who explained that the anglers before us had not been catching at casting range: they had boated their rigs out to 130 metres — and that turned the session around. On another trip 300 metres of line was split between two rods, and that session was fished by casting, at around 90 to 100 metres. Casting is not dead either: a good mirror came from about 100 metres. One observation recurs — a handful of groundbait dropped with the boated rig brings the bite sooner.
The swims are numbered. Swim 5 is known as the “many-fish” peg, and swim 10 is a channel favourite. At the time the videos were shot, swims one to nine and a half allowed rigs to be taken out by boat; the rest are cast-only. On the cast-only swims you may go out to feed by boat twice a day. Near the reeds the water shallows to 40–50 centimetres, so the boat needs care there too.
Barbless hooks are compulsory, and that shapes how a fish is played: several came off in the videos, one after more than twenty minutes. It is worth reading the fishery rules before you go — and if you take a boat out, a life jacket is not optional.
For size, the best fish across the three sessions was a 20.1 kilo common, at night; there are also mirrors of 18 and 16 kilos, several fish over ten, and grass carp of eight to ten kilos. The typical fish runs between five and twelve kilos.
Most fish came to an SBS pineapple pop-up, Feedermania Lemon Dream wafters and BCN Airwafters, over C1 and C2 boilies, Monkey and MadMix groundbait, and 6, 8 and 14 mm halibut pellets. Rigs alternate between a spinner rig, a flat method and an inline lead, with PVA bags.
