30 May 2015 – Catch Report from: Mandy, Geoff, Daren & Claire

Multiple lake records broken, loads of carp caught and two massive catfish, what an incredible carp fishing holiday!

This week we welcomed another new group to the venue. I love meeting new anglers especially such well travelled carpers as this week’s group. With PB carp in the 60’s and PB cats in the 160’s these guys know what they want from a fishing holiday and know how to catch them! Anglers of this calibre don’t travel to Beausoleil to up their PB’s, they come because few venues offer the right balance between quality fishing for good conditioned fish and great accommodation in a well maintained environment. The first indication I got that the guys were in for a very special week indeed was when I called in on Tuesday and the total was up at 12 already. As they were leaving very early Saturday morning we decided to pay them a visit on Friday to say our farewells. We were just catching up with news when a Neville let out a piercing scream to announce the imminent arrival of fish number 33. Fish number 34 arrived 20 minutes on the other side of the venue! In total they landed 39 fish. The previous record number of fish (carp, cats, sturgeon) caught in one week stood at 37 and was only set earlier in the year by another group of first time visitors. It’s fantastic to see another high score come in. It shows that all the work we put in over the winter has paid dividends and the carp and cats love their new environment!

It was also interesting to learn how cat fishing for 150lb+ monsters on the Ebro compared to our big cats. I was quite surprised to learn that landing our cats are more of a challenge! The guys tell me that it comes down to the size of the water, the obstacles that are present and the strength of gear used. I’ve always known that our cats really do give clients a challenging and unique experience and it’s great to know that it compares very favourably with a trip to the river Ebro. Obviously based on their success I was interested to find out a little more about how they were fishing. Rigs were kept very simple with inline leads working very well. Small bright popups featured heavily in their approach with both pink and white doing very well. Traps were kept small and the small amounts of additional bait (pellets etc.) were sprayed around the area to keep them moving around. They were fishing for one bite at a time and moved rigs around to keep the runs coming. If an area didn’t produce then rigs were moved accordingly. They paid a keen eye on fish activity and focused on areas where the fish were most active. Simple stuff really! Darren used glugged chops quite a lot and when the fish moved in on him the runs just never stopped. I won’t give away his secrets but I noticed a few bottles that you’d normally find in a specialist sector of your average supermarket lying around his swim!

Two other lake records were broken this week by Mandy who upped the ladies lake record for catfish to 82lbs. She also smashed the lake record for mirror carp with a 38lb beast. Mandy’s lovely, super keen, super competitive too! You go girl! Massive congratulations to the guys for their efforts this week. It’s a really impressive result especially considering that Daren is quite seriously ill and has limited amounts of energy. It was an absolute pleasure to meet them, they’ve already recommended the venues to a few friends which is great to hear and we hope to see them again sometime in the future.