Fishing report from Lee and friends

A boys’ stag do with carp fishing! Cats to 93lbs and carp to 38lbs

This week we welcomed Lee, Jake and Tom & Josh to the venue for their first taste of carp fishing in France. As for many, this holiday was delayed for 3 years in total, as was Lee’s wedding! So fair play to the guys for sticking with the plan and making it happen. After such a long wait they were very relieved to be here and were really looking forward to their time with us.

Highly recommend the tuition! Stunning fish and surroundings. Will be back!

Tuition

I arrived bright and breezy on Sunday morning and spent the day walking them through what they needed to know on all fronts. Tom was the most experienced angler of the group. He’s out doing regular sessions on the Linear complex and he soaked it all up like a sponge. Lee (the groom) is self employed and hardly gets the time to go fishing. Jake is a coarse angler that’s only just started carp fishing and Josh has been fishing for years. Based on what they told me, this was going to be a massive step up for the guys. I covered as much ground as I could in the time available and then left them to it for a couple of days.

Into the groove

Tom was the first to get on the board with a very pretty heavily scaled double. He soon added to that with The Parrot (previously known as the snub-nosed common) at 35lbs. That’s more like it! Tom likes commons and had an excellent name for this very special fish… Voldemort! We loved it so expect that name to crop up in future catch reports. Just like his namesake, Voldemort fought long and hard and took a very long time to subdue. Tom was delighted, which is what it’s all about.

Tom went on to catch quite a few of our carp and had multiple spots rocking. He took to Beausoleil like a duck to water. He really enjoyed the effort and the level of detail required to catch consistently here. He rowed for miles and put a serious amount of graft into his fishing.

On the rig front Tom used one of my trick multi rigs with a few of his own personal touches.

With the effort came the rewards and Tom was top rod this week. He really wanted a 40 but it wasn’t to be this time. He did well though, learnt an absolute shedload and returns home a better angler.

Follow-up

As Tom was the only angler with carp on the bank I called round Tuesday to have a chat with the guys. Jake’s confidence was shot to bits after a 20 minute encounter with one of our catfish. Also shot to bits were one of Jake’s reels. There is a very good reason why we recommend good quality big pit reels! Faced with the prospect of not fishing or buying new reels I lent Jake my three old Shimano’s. I worked with Jake to get him back in the game as quickly as possible. He was a bit shaken by the experience but it was either going to break him or make him for sure but he felt a bit better after some extra time together and I wished him well.

Next on the list was Lee & Josh who were also fishless. I wound in all their lines and performed a full reset for them. By the next morning two out of three anglers were on the board which was a big relief all round.

The Groom

I know all too well how difficult it is to run a business and go fishing. Lee had never been night fishing before and so this was all very new to him. One of Lee’s objectives was to catch a big catfish. Luckily, that’s exactly what he hooked. As is often the case it didn’t go exactly to plan and he and Jake got towed around the lake for 50 minutes. The 93lb catfish was finally banked in the Big Double which is where Tom was fishing (Lee was bivvied up in point ‘C’).

I asked Lee whether he wanted to repeat the experience and he told me:  “hell yeah, I want a 120 next!” Lee also banked a carp and the sturgeon on Tuesday night so it was very much a case of job done for him. Lee used one of my trick multi rigs for all species including the massive cat.

Jake joins the party

The distance between match/coarse angling to specimen carp fishing is very long. I know, I made the journey myself and it took me a very long time. With a PB of a low double, literally anything Jake hooked (apart from a kitten) was going to break his PB. On Wednesday he smashed his PB into the stratosphere with a 30lb mirror (ah, who needs 20s!). He then went on to catch Dink at 38lbs. He also banked Patch at 35lbs which put up a terrific fight.

All of Jake’s carp came from one small spot along the Island margin. He tried everything he could on the other spots we found but that was the only one to produce this week. It’s testament to just how spotty this place is and if you can’t join up the dots it’s going to be very hard. The most successful rig for Jake was one of my trick multi rigs in a snowman configuration. This rig accounted for all of Jake’s carp. Massive congrats to Jake this week. Beausoleil has turned him into a carp angler. He’s even booked himself onto Linear when he gets home!

Well done guys, it was quite an experience for your first French fishing trip 👊