13 August 2017 – Catch report from: Mark and friends

A steep learning curve for our anglers this week but they still managed cats to 105lbs and 5 x 30’s to 35lbs

This week we welcomed a new group to the venue from Milton Keynes with half the group venturing to France for the first time while the other two were more experienced abroad. After waiting for a year for the holiday, everyone was very excited to finally walk the banks and after a good tour of the lake we left the guys to settle in and get started.

When I met with them on Monday, there was no good news to report and plenty of head scratching going on. They’d never fished a water were the carp are that good at getting away with it! As is often the case, Beausoleil can prove a little tricky to get to grips with at first and tactics that had been successful for them on different waters were not working here. Beausoleil may be a relatively small lake but the carp see lines in the water 8 months of the year, they know what to expect and they don’t give themselves up easily.

Where’s my lead gone?

Darren, on his 8th trip to France, very experienced, was gobsmacked by the place and how cute the carp are. He still had his lines in the water when I met him on Monday and he told me that he’d had a rig under the knuckle of a tree out all night but hadn’t had so much as a beep. As I glanced down at the rod, I noticed that the line wasn’t pointing anywhere near that spot. Perplexed, Darren wound the rod in and saw that his lead was over 10m away from where he thought, and the rig was as clean as a whistle. The explanation: he had been done… royally. Darren had used a classic semi fixed inline setup. Mr. Carp had simply picked the whole thing up, and taken it walkies until the lead had pinged off a rock and flicked the hook out. Darren was dumbfounded….. welcome to Beausoleil I said!

Only 1 cat came to play but it was a whopper at 105lbs

Mark and Darren were both fishing in open water as they were keen to get in on the cat action. On Tuesday night, Darren lost one in the roots along snake bank but he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice and on the next opportunity, he gave it everything he had. After a 40 minute battle, he was rewarded with a 105lbs specimen. He was in bits for the next 24hrs but that one fish made the trip for him.

Darren had put his faith in Big Game in 25lbs and properly tested the four turn blood knot before dropping the rig. When he found himself connected to the biggest fish of his life, it gave him the confidence he needed to give it all he had and win the day!

After experiencing a Beausoleil cat he was no longer interested in the carp and he and Mark, who also experienced a hook pull, went all out for another. Now at this time of year, normally, you don’t have to wait long. But the weather turned during the week, the temperatures dropped and all of a sudden, it felt like mid-September! Not great cat weather unfortunately…

Pac-Man strikes again

As the carp were playing hard to get early in the week, I had a good chat with everyone and as is often the case, a combination of things such as hook sharpness, baiting strategy and lead setup were letting them down. The guys were also blown away by how richly featured the lake is and the precision required to fish it properly.

Martin and Drew were particularly thirsty for knowledge and as the weather turned proper carpy mid week, they made a few tweaks and things started to change. All the guys really liked the Beausoleil rig and by the end of the week everyone was on it!

Martin banked the two best carp of the week from the tricky point ‘A’ swim. Drew was seeing a lot of activity in the Island point swim but still hadn’t scored on Wednesday. Very determined to crack the problem, we talked through his choices and he was still loading up the bait boat with too many freebies. “Think Pac-Man”, I said, “Dot them along the margin, and just put the rig in the bait boat”. This was very very different to what Drew was used to but he trusted my advice.

That night, just like a switch being flicked, the rain came, and so did the carp. By Thursday morning everyone had caught a decent specimen so it was smiles all round at breakfast!

Drew then stuck to his new plan and went on to bank 5 nice specimens on Thursday and Friday including our one and only full scaled mirror which we hadn’t seen on the bank for 3 years!!

Well done guys for working the problem and all the best on your next fishing adventures.