Last week, we welcomed Rob, Lee and Adam to the venue for their first French adventure. The guys are all experienced UK anglers but they’ve never fished in France before and our venue was exactly what they were looking for.
Their UK experience on large, difficult syndicate and club waters stood them in good stead and they’d banked 5 between them by Tuesday afternoon.
Adam was in pole position with a 74 lb catfish and Magnum at close to 50 lbs! That’s mad really because we stocked him at 28 lbs in 2017 so he’s done fantastical well for us. He also looks absolutely mint. Just a lot, lot bigger than when I first met him!
Lee had also caught a couple of low 30’s from catfish corner. This area is not fished much as the fishing is mostly done at very close range but with stealthy tactics it can work well.
Rob started off in Island point and was first off the mark with the sturgeon. Although there were carp active down by the bridge, Rob wasn’t comfortable fishing down that end of the island so he moved over to point ‘A’ where he felt he had a better chance of landing what he hooked.
One of Lee’s objectives this week was to meet one of our really big catfish and after a 30 minute hard fought battle he did! Fishing from Catfish corner was key to him being able to land this monster. The fish easily made the end of the island which is not where you want them to go. Lee’s a big strong guy and it took all he had to stop him! It’s normally at this point in the fight that something can go bang but everything held and they hauled out a 137 lbs monster! Lee had his own set of 220 lbs scales that were purchased for the trip so as the 140 lbs specimen was a guestimate I guess this is a new lake record! Fantastic work mate 👏
He also did well on the carp front, banking 5 in total and he met Sammy. Adam added a couple more to his tally to end on 5.
Rob caught a nice low 30lbs from point ‘A’ but this swim is tricky at the best of times. He also hooked and lost a couple of catfish and after that, he decided to wind in. He wasn’t here to leave gear in the lake so fair play for making that decision.
Well done guys, great skills 👍
Earlier in the month, we welcomed Mark and his dad Cliff to the venue for their first trip to France. Mark started carp fishing about a year ago and has been using our YouTube channel to help guide him. We had a great tuition day together on the Sunday and he started fishing on Monday afternoon. In the end Mark only fished two nights but he caught one of our 30’s. Unfortunately they had to leave early due to other commitments but they had a great time, learned loads and are hoping to get back to us again soon.
After that we welcomed Peter and a friend to the venue for their first trip. Peter has fished a couple of other French venues before, he explained he’s not into modern carp fishing and doesn’t use boilies. He prefers fishing for them using a quill float and paste or using hunks of bread on the surface. Our carp were of less interest to him than the catfish. Ever since he caught a 48lb catfish at White Acres he’s wanted to catch something larger. As there are only 9 very large specimens, he was always going to be up against it. Even more so as he doesn’t fish nights and fishes afternoons and evenings. He did manage one run on his sea fishing multiplier rod/reel setup but after letting the clutch tick off for the required time, he connected momentarily with something that pulled back but the catfish dropped the rig and he wound in a bare hook. He also tried his hand at roach fishing with a whip but even they weren’t biting that week.
