Fishing report: end of May

Some very productive fishing despite the warm temperatures

To start off, we welcomed Eric back from Holland. Eric has been coming to us for quite a few years. Taking on Beausoleil solo is not for the faint hearted but this is something Eric is well practised at and this year proved to be his most successful yet.

Thanks to the “small trap” approach (10kg of bait per week) which has become the new normal, our oxygen levels are very healthy. It’s also proving extremely effective at limiting interference from any un-wanted catfish. Eric really doesn’t want to hook one of our cats solo. As an extra precaution against them, he opted for washed out baits and hemp. No pellets, no liquids, just lake water and time.

This is the first time this experiment has been done here in a while and I was very interested to see the results. In the end he only hooked one big catfish which I have to say, at this time of year, when the cats are very active, is very good and surprising.

Now if you’re an angler that likes to use a lot of liquids in your fishing, you might think that washed out baits might avoid the catfish but then the carp wouldn’t be interested either…nothing could be further from the truth. He had a field day! In total, Eric landed 19 carp all of which were around 30lb and one 40 (Nicky, the big common). When fishing solo, Eric sensibly leaves the fish in the net but luckily he did catch three while I was on site so we do have a few photos.

Like a few anglers this year, Eric is a big fan of the latest carp fishing tech and uses a fully specced up RT7 bait boat. The RT7 uses the latest generation echo sounder from Raymarine and is capable of showing some incredible detail below the surface. We took it for a tour around the lake looking for carp and they weren’t hard to find but they were in very specific locations holding very tight to marginal features during daylight hours.

Eric prefers to target spots but rather than just drop rigs in the middle of the hard spots, he likes to set traps around the edge. It didn’t take long for Eric to work his way up to six productive “edge” spots (3 in the margins and 3 in open water). After a successful capture, the trap was moved to the next spot in the rotation but the bait boat hoppers were loaded on both sides so that the rig and bait were dropped on the new spot and then the boat sailed itself back to the old spot to top it up ready for next time.

This is a strategy that is only really possible thanks to modern technology as a high level of precision is required. It’s the ultimate in low volume/high precision pre-baiting. Just enough to set the scene for the next capture. Love it or hate it, it was very effective and required a minimal amount of bait to keep six spots rocking all week long… I thought it was brilliant!

It was wonderful to see Eric again and we look forward to seeing him again next September.

Next up it was our other solo angler, Tony. Tony’s last visit was cut short so he was very much looking forward to having a proper go for them this time as last time was October and he only had 3 days to play with.

It was very warm on arrival as a mini heat wave was in full swing. Talking of swing, the carp had also decided that the time was right to complete their annual spawning ritual. We know that the smaller carp successfully spawned in late April but we’d seen no signs of spawning marks on the medium and large carp so they were due to go any moment. It’s really important to have stable weather at spawning time. What we don’t want is spawnus interruptus… It’s very dangerous for the females as damaged eggs that don’t get fully released can rot inside them. Luckily this weather was set to stay for a whole week which are exactly the conditions we need for a safe spawning event (well, as safe as it can ever be).

As is often the case, just because some of the carp start to spawn, it doesn’t mean there are no carp available to be caught and Sunday morning, Tony was off the mark with The Sub at 45lb and a mid twenty mirror. Bites were hard during the heat of the day but Tony caught every night he fished (bar the last) and even when he skipped a night to catch up on some kip, he’d bag a couple around dusk or after dawn the next morning. By Thursday morning, the heat was really taking its toll and the fishing had become much harder. With 11 carp carp caught and 1 massive catfish, Tony decided to quit while he was ahead and headed home early. It was great to see him again and we look forward to welcoming him back next year.