24 April 2016 – Catch Report from: Alex & Loes

This Dutch angling couple return for another week at their favourite exclusive French carp fishing venue!

This week we welcomed back Alex & Loes who, year after year,  travel all the way from Holland to sample the delights of Beausoleil. These guys absolutely love their carp fishing and are exceedingly well equipped. The main addition to their setup this year was a massive new fishing tent, and when I say massive, I mean 42 square metres massive…. good job the point swims are on the generous side! Alex is mad about big cats and is one of a very select group to have banked a 100lb+ specimen from the venue. This year they were keen to put more focus on our wily carp.

The week started very slowly and by Monday only our lone sturgeon had made an appearance. To be fair, the conditions were very poor for carp fishing with air pressure around 1025mb, max temperatures of 17 degrees, which then dropped to -1 at night. Very similar conditions to our March session in fact. With Alex’s permission I went out in the boat and scrapped his fishing spots to see if I could find any uneaten bait. What was fascinating was that I found exactly the same result as I did during the March session: the spots were clean apart from a few baits, but no actual runs occurred. This lasted for 3 nights but thankfully the weather changed and the lake gave them some chances. On Thursday, we heard that they’d had six more with a brace of 30’s for Loes (both PB’s) and an 82lb cat for Alex. Considering the conditions, they did well but with hindsight, they knew they could have had a few more as a few fish fell off on the way to the net. The root cause was hook sharpness and Alex told me himself that he’d been a bit sloppy and paid the price. I can honestly say that learning to sharpen my hooks properly is the single most important thing I ever learnt to do in fishing. I’m more than happy to take the time to show you how if it’s something new to you.

Based on what I’ve seen over the winter and thus far this year, I’ve come to the conclusion that even during conditions which we consider to be very un-favourable for carp fishing (basically because very little gets caught), the carp are still feeding! The best explanation I have for this is that during these times, they do feed (even though we think they don’t) but do so, so cautiously, that they are able to do the rigs, clean us out and avoid capture! It’s also become apparent that certain rigs have the ability to trip the carp up. Beausoleil continues to be an endless source of fascination for me and the anglers that come here …. the learning never stops!

It was an absolute pleasure as always to welcome Alex & Loes to Beausoleil and we are delighted to know that they are already planning their 2017 carp fishing holiday with us!