Enzo Matrix

Hey guys. So there is a big issue I am having with UL in the new ladoga. I am using Carolina rig and doing jig steps. I am getting constant fish got away and the bites are not even registering. I even spam hitting R to see if I get the notification a fish is on and this doesn’t even happen. Just goes instant fish got away many many times. I am hooking at about a 50% or less ratio. please look into this :)

Oh I like this very much!

Greetings RF4 anglers! I know many players are always looking to take on the next great challenge but don't know where to start! I am talking about the mighty Beluga species and Kaluga. Here I will help guide you on spots, weather, best times, gear setups including the extreme method for landing the 600+ ones, PVA's! This information is all thanks to the extensive testing by the Beluga community and discords that have helped greatly. First to make note, if you are new to fishing Beluga's, understand the fights can last hours, usually 3 hours for trophy before tiring out and BIG ones 5 hours+ so plan accordingly (don't fish them with a restart around the corner). Also know trophies pay well over 10,000 silver and can get you 7000 points in weekly leader board which if lucky could win you a top 1-3 place! So how does getting a potential 20,000+ silver sound from a single trophy beluga? It happens! First up: Beluga and Blacksea Beluga Setup Live Bait Rig Legacy rod 80.5kg test (Blank damage less than 7% ideal) Beluga Venga Reel 74kg Braid line (safe zone for new people) Weights (nothing particular here) Ultra LF 4/0 Hook Perch / Gibel / Crucian Extreme setup when you know how to do max drag and straight rod (Read below on this) Live Bait Rig Legacy rod 80.5kg test (Blank damage pointless as line way over fresh rod test) Beluga Venga Reel (As fresh as possible Mechanism %) 110kg Snake heavy Braid line (Risk to reel / rod breaking if not careful) Weights (nothing particular here) Ultra LF 4/0 Hook Perch / Gibel / Crucian Spod Trick! Use the spod with your baitfish for even better bites! Cast your spod first, remember its landing position and cast your baitfish to the same spot. My personal Beluga Mix that was designed for an increase biterate of not just beluga but also other species in the same area you are fishing. This has increased the other sturgeons as well. This is one of my personal secret mix's I want to share with you guys, feel free to test / revise! It has always worked very good for me. Weather and Best Times Beluga in Akhtuba seem to prefer overcast days with a High of 28-32oC and the mornings need to get to 15-16oC. Beluga and Blacksea Beluga are more active in the evenings / midnight / morning times. They do bite during day but is rare. In the picture, Blue is average, Yellow is good, Red is great. Keep an eye on weather to go fishing when the weather is really good! Blacksea Beluga also like overcast days more, temperatures in donets don't seem to have much influence on bite rates for them. Spots! Lets start with Donets since it is the easiest place when it comes to spots. Same hole, 28:138 27m clip Same hole, 42:131 27m clip into the tail This is the most common area to catch the Blacksea Beluga. Blacksea Beluga were in the 6.5m long ago (J7) but they have not been active here for a long time. Akhtuba 41:108 has been a hotspot many times, however very large Beluga (650kg+) are unable to swim to an easier landing zone and get stuck in the hole here. 48:87 is on the opposite side (C6) casting to the small island 20-22m clip. You can land very large Beluga here thanks to an easier bank to land on. Again a 650+ Won't swim down the river but instead dance around the middle of the channel giving you a great show! Shes just to big to fit through! lol When this spot is active, you can land very big Beluga thanks to the better water edges, also an easy fight by keeping it in the corner. A clip of 38-45 is good for here. Perch bigger than 100g will struggle to make this distance. Store bought 100g can cast far enough. Or use the wind to help make it fly! Another hotspot but know you will need to keep control of the fish here from going to far left or right! 89:96 (8m hole) is a 20m clip 138:24 is another spot next to this one, 23-24m clip 122:27 has been a spot also, 18m clip is best These are the general best spots and usually most active and safest places to fish them. Beluga are in other spots but far to dangerous to target such as A1 square, 66:133 area, C4 square, C3 9m hole and parts of the main river. Extreme Method of the "MAX DRAG" Due to the limitations we currently have and this could change later on who knows? We are forced to use a technique to bring in very heavy fish. This is what is known as to "Max Drag" in the fish. This means you will lock your reel's friction to 30 making the line power / rod power become the main focus. The biggest risk of this, is that if your line is to much for your reel or rod, you will break your reels mechanism or rod blank will go SNAP! This is a extremely costly mistake. So how can we safely avoid this risk? Use 74kg braid line on a Venga with less than 20% Mech damage and a Legacy rod with less than 7% blank damage. 74kg Line can land a trophy 500kg but it will be tough and it won't land them much more than this. So how do you land these crazy 700kg+ Beluga!? Credit to the first person who landed one over 700, Anton523 of the Russia Region. This player took my walk back technique and raised the bar! First lets talk about what to do during max drag. When the Beluga is tired it will move very slowly and stay still for periods of time. You will need to lock the reel, walk back slowly to bring the tension up to high yellow / very low red. But first keep it yellow to make sure the fish doesn't pull a fast one on you and move quickly. This way you have enough time to quickly put drag to 29. As you have the tension into the red, the fish will slowly release tension, when this is happening, reel a tiny bit each time to keep the tension up. The fish will then flick its tail causing it to move towards you, the tension will drop fast. This is your chance to walk backwards and also reel if you can while walking backwards. When the fish begins to pull back and the tension shoots back up, walk towards the fish and again try to reel while walking towards it. What you are doing while doing all this is forcing the fish to the surface of the water. As you get the fish to the surface, it will become easier to drag it to shore. This takes a lot of practice and you will be sweating doing this your first time trust me. DO NOT simply walk back and forth with the fish and never reel in any line. This has been done with many players and makes this part of the battle WAY harder than it needs to be. You are playing tug of war when doing this, and the fish will win if big enough. Keep a distance from the shore so you have room to walk towards the fish. If you are to close to the shore, put drag to 29, run back from shore and max drag asap! Your main goal is to keep as much pressure on the fish as possible at all times. As soon as you give the fish slack, it can make a run and a lot of line back out because you now are trying to stop a train from moving. Think of if as you are holding onto a truck with a rope, as soon as you let that truck roll away from you, you can't stop it, so don't give it slack! The very extreme using 110kg line! The point of doing this is because you want to land a beluga over 700kg+ and you are willing to risk it all. So how do you make use of 110kg line or why use it? The rod's power is 80.5kg right? What if I told you, you could totally nullify the power of the rod and only let your reel mech take on 100% of the force? The Venga's Mech is higher than the Ti of 80.5kg. How much higher is something you will have to ask to find out, even with that information all over, I am pretty sure posting that here is a no no on my part. Just know it is not higher than 110kg and your mech will break if you fail at this... or worse your rod. So the technique is to be away from the shore, you still do the same style of what I explained during the max drag, except you point your rod completely straight at the fish. This will take all power off the rod and 100% is applied to the reel's mech. You will see your tension get lower as you point your rod straight. Guess what.. yes this can be done even on a Fortuna carp rod. If while doing this, you bend your rod and the tension skyrockets, if to high already this could cause a rod break. You can not repair a broken rod so understand the risk of this. If you mess up but have your rod straight, your reel mech will break instead. This can atleast be fixed and is cheaper than buying a new legacy rod. Practice with 74kg line, hook some big ones until you feel totally comfortable to move up OR don't and wait to see if the future will bring us something to ease our pain lol Kaluga information! It may have been released not long ago but our community is fast to learning them. The setup for them is still a work in progress but if you are looking to get your first one, here is an easy setup to start. Use 74kg line instead of me doing 110kg for safety reasons PVA's being tested and salmon oil attraction seems to be working. Crab and mussel attraction also works. Shoutout to player Mobii (ORCA's Team Member) for the salmon oil test with success! This has been an active spot, the Kaluga have been got in 5.5m, 4.5m, 3.5m(E6) and 3.5m(F3) Still early and many spots being caught. This will conclude my guide for going after these huge fish in RF4. I hope it helps you on your journey to getting these insane trophies. As of today June 9, 2021 the first rare trophy Beluga of 1,076kg was landed by a China region player in a whopping 13 hours! This was thought to not be possible at this time but this player showed extreme skill and patience to pull it off. It was also worth over 37,000 silver! Talk about a reason to celebrate. They used 110kg line with a mech damage of 5%. Good luck everyone! Tight Lines! ~Enzo Matrix~

Oh I didn’t know that. Okay well perch are on Yama so then they must work here? Lol good to know tho thanks!

A bunch of us were testing baitfish in Yama with not a Single bite. Not even burbot. These were the perch, gibel, crucian, bleak, ruffe. Only ones that worked were lamprey and tung baitfish. Are these baitfish disabled for Yama? Or should they also work here? Not sure if possible bug so wanted to bring it up just in case.

Awe yeah!! Awesome team for 1st!

Wait?? I was told our team submitted? You never got one from us Pirates to? we easily were second place in score.

Tung trolling has been incredible using crafted lures. Having a blast. I for sure have not seen a decrease in anything. Was a bit worried at first lol very happy to see crafted stuff being very good. It was costly to get to 100 ^_^;

Ofcourse this would happen to me at the furthest point in amber from the town lmao. Perhaps we can get a "push" feature to free a quad stuck on a log lol

Atm bream don’t get this big in rf4. I’m assuming 8kg is max, that’s 17.63lb. Perhaps in future bigger breams may come. 22lb bream tho wow. also that world record bighead lol. some crazy records!

This is 100% correct. It seems rf4 has black carp and grass carp being shared as same species with black being the “rare” version. Using same sizes. Black carp 100% needs a total makeover with its max weight / trophy size and rare. then add it to amber lake lol

Here is just an example, 21 Taimen in 2h 40min. Factor in the lure damage, and gear wear 794 silver. This should really be a valuable fish, belaya isn't a place a low level is going to be trying to fish this. So really its a fish in a level 30 waterbody, powerful, and does take some time to be fishing them. Compare this to sturgeons or even the UL fishing here at Tung which pays way more silver in the same time on much easier fish (way less gear dmg etc) = much more profit overall. Currently I am fishing them for the enjoyment of the fight lol, but sure would like to be rewarded a bit better for the effort to ^^

I was hoping the Dev's could revisit the Taimen's overall sell value. It feels very low considering the power the fish puts up (which I love the power of the fish lol). Could Taimen please get a boost in silver value because they do put quite the wear on gear, it should feel more rewarding to be catching them. Thanks

I would love to see an epic UL region comp, total weight of 3 species. Taimen Atlantic Salmon Catfish The last UL comp I remember was max weight pike which was very fun. Not sure if this is to be posted somewhere else but hope this can be a future region comp.

Oooof! Lol we were so happy to get top 3 and Bam! It was all a dream ^_^. Next time!