Fishing report from: Jeroen & Victor

First carp fishing trip to France for this father and son is a great success with carp to nearly 40 lbs

This week we welcomed father and son team Jeroen and Victor to the venue. They’d only been carp fishing for two and a half years and this was their first fishing trip to France and longest ever fishing trip (10 days in total). If you’re relatively new to the sport then Beausoleil is a great choice because of the level of on site support that we offer. Jeroen did not hesitate to take us up on the offer and booked me for the day to help shorten the learning curve.

The guys arrived on Friday so I spent most of Saturday with them going through all the basics. The learning curve was a steep one but we covered plenty of ground.

By mid-week, they had banked a fish each and judging from the conditions we knew that there were more bites to be had. They were hand sharpening their hooks but they were actually making them blunter rather than sharper (which is something quite common actually). Swapping over to the Nash twisters which are much better out of the packet than most solved that problem.

In their own words:

Results start to come

After my second visit, things started to click and they managed 6 carp between them. The big cats got the better of them but they did catch some nice carp and both broke their PB’s which was great to see. Sammy (our suicidal Sturgeon) went a bit nuts this week with 5 trips to the bank. A couple of days before the end of the holiday Jeroen really started to get a feel for the place and find his feet. His only regret was that they didn’t have longer to enjoy the moment before the drive back to Holland.

Bait and rigs

I made Jeroen 10 of my supple multi rigs which were enough for both of them for the whole week. By changing the hooks regularly it enabled them to keep fishing effectively with the minimum amount of work. Victor was determined to master hook sharpening and it will be interesting to see how he gets on with that. It’s not easy! On the bait front they used our new carp food packs which consist of 5kg of 18mm Scopex Squid + 5kg of  Scopex Squid Flake + 5kg of Scopex Squid pellets + 1 litre of liquid and popups to match. It also comes with the cultured hookbaits which can be a real edge in the summer as they are not only highly attractive to all species but the centre is rock hard and will resist being whittled by roach (they can be very active during the summer). Most of the fish were caught on the cultured baits.

The guys learned loads and will return to Holland, completely different anglers. It was a pleasure to meet them and I was very glad that they chose me to be their guide.