Fishing report: Early June

Some very productive fishing with 20 x 30s, 4 x 40s and 1 x 50 and a massive catfish!

To begin the month we welcomed Simon and Jim to the venue. Simon has done many trips to Beausoleil over the years and knew the venue before we took it over in 2011 but he hasn’t been for 10 years so it was good to see him again. This time Simon would be fishing with Jim who was carping in the 90s but he’d been away from the sport for quite a while and only recently got back into it.

Following on from the heat wave of the previous week, the oxygen was still below where we wanted it to be despite running both aeration units flat out. When the oxygen is lower the fish don’t feed as well and can be harder to catch but the aerators created large enough safe zones for the carp so that there were still bites to be had from the off. 

Jim and Simon fished hard from Saturday pm through Tuesday but by then they’d caught so many fish they were running on empty so they had to dial it back a bit. That’s not to say that they stopped working at it, they still fished 15hrs a day and rowed out every rig by hand for ultimate precision. The effort paid off and they caught an amazing number of fish. 

TBH we are scratching our heads a bit at the minute. We’ve always known that Beausoleil was capable of producing some excellent fishing but it can be moody and usually if the oxygen is down, it can become hard. The low oxygen at the start of the week did slow the fishing down but it didn’t take long for the level to come back up and then it switched into full afterburner mode churning out 30 after 30. It was … a little bit mental! Now you still have to tick all the boxes to capitalise on this and the guys did exactly that.

Small traps are the new “edge”

They followed our advice of using small traps only and it worked a charm. I think this continues to be the biggest surprise. Anglers are using around 10kg of bait and catching a lot of fish. It seems that as the week goes on and anglers continue to follow these guidelines, the better it fishes. It’s also strictly limiting the number of really small kittens caught. The smallest catfish this week was 17lb and they are a lot of fun at that size!

Halfway through the week the guys had a swap around to even up the numbers as the dam wall continued to produce the lion’s share of the carp. That’s not to say that point ‘A’ and ‘B’ didn’t fish because they did but point ‘C’ was the swim to be in. In the end, they got a pickup from every spot they picked. It didn’t seem to matter whether they dropped a rig in open water or tight to the margin, it was only a matter of time before it went.

They did work hard finding and fishing each spot though, there was no pub chucking. Every bite was earned which is the way it should be.

It was great to see them and I hope they can recover from a truly epic week of fishing!

Next up we welcomed Paul and his wife Nicola to the venue for their first visit to us. Paul has been fishing all his life and is an accomplished game angler as well as a course angler. He’s also been carp fishing for 10 years so he’s done an awful lot of fishing. It’s always interesting meeting someone with so much experience. Paul booked the tuition and we spent a great day together and I was able to help him in a few areas of his fishing. 

It’s not often that I warn anglers to make sure they are properly organised before starting but with catch numbers continuing to rise, I didn’t think it would take long for Paul to get off the mark. I was hoping for 2-3 on the first night… he had five (three of them were small/mid sized catfish) Ah they do love the Scopex Squid!

For the first half of the week this was very much a family holiday with a bit of fishing so after the first night’s success, Paul had a break of 24hrs before refocusing on the fishing. Paul had two more carp and Sammy twice more (love him or hate him he is a good sport!). On Wednesday, the carp went a bit quiet and then Paul hooked a real monster on his own in the big Double in the middle of the night… Our weigh sling is 7ft and this thing was longer than that. How the hell he managed to tease it back from behind the tip of the island successfully I’ll never know. He wasn’t messing around on the mainline front though with 30lb 0.56 Berkley Big Game. We have no idea how heavy it was but the pectoral fin is the size of a human face… let’s just call it immense!

After this, the carp fishing went a bit quiet but later the next afternoon Paul got the rods out again and caught Sammy and another nice carp. What I couldn’t wrap my head around was that after the seriously intense physical and mental battle with the catfish from the night before, he was going to try again for another one this time using one of his favourite baits: spicy sausage…. Absolute madness… they build ’em tough up north!

Unfortunately he didn’t catch a second monster but I think Nicola was quite relieved! She was a hero getting up at 3am to photograph that beast! He did catch Sammy twice more on Friday morning and elected to fish Home swim for the last day to be closer to the van. The carp decided to be elsewhere so that was the end of the action.

It was such a pleasure to meet them and we hope they get the chance to visit us another year.