my france trip Dream Complex France

[Twiddler]

Dream Complex France

Frank's lake

Well what can I say...it was an experience trip, a big learning curve for me.

What I didn't know was, the lake was not a commercial lake but a nartural lake of 25 acres, stocked with around 300 common, mirror and gras carp. The lake also holds sturgeons, pike and a couple of zander.


After meeting up with Frank the owner, we were shown the lake and our pegs, the guys were pitching in two's, Justin and Mick (his dad) at the first peg, Young Drew and his mate Sam on the second, Paul and Gary on the third................then me on my own on the fourth.(Looked like I hit the jackpot as I saw the fish jumping like mad in front of me)


It was around tea time before we were set up and settled down and managed to get the rods out.
My peg




view to the right


view to the left



On arrival I gathered some info from 2 guys from liverpool who were just leaving after fishing the lake for a week.(and I had a bedchair and a big unhooking matt given by one of them...no idea why he didn't want it any more as they is nothing wrong with either)

Also there was a Belgium team of 'Alien bait' fishing at the end of the lake who fished the lake for the 5th time....needless to say I had a little chat to the guys too to find out as much info as possible.
To my shock I found out that the lake is a very hard one to fish, that's why the lake is use for practising for the carp world championship. ( GREAT.....day one and my dream of a big fish already has been shattered)


Well, still I would give it my best shot trying to at least get a couple of fish, which proved to be very difficult indeed, as the weather seem to have it in for us, the whole week we only had a single day and night without rain.

Sunday I had a polite young Belgium guy joining me on my peg (my peg was classed as one peg but for English standard it would be classed as 3 pegs I guess). Story was, that this lad (Julian) was going to fish a few pegs down but told Frank he was welcome to fish on my peg if he wanted to ( I thought it would be good to have someone close by in case I would get a big fish and wouldn't be able to cope on my own, as the others were too far away to hear me calling for help).

Anyway, monday I had my first run and I lost it, my trace (I used silkworm) snapped like a hair. Julian explained to me in his broken english that the lake has got lots of rocks and it would be better to use fluron carbon line and much shorter trace.


So I tied another rig with only a 2 inch trace with 25lb fluron carbon line, I cast back out around 60 yrd into the gravel patch right behind a weed bed.
My other rod was cast to my right about 80 yrds out (I had to asked the lake owner to cast it for me, as my casting skills are not the best and I can't get out that far).
My third rod I kept to the left close to the margin, as I am a great believer in fishing close in to the margin.

Well what can I say, nothing happened, it was getting frustrating, as I could see th fish jumping like mad around my bait but besides a couple of pick ups and drops nothing happened.
I tried all different kind of bait from pop ups to different flavours boilie to tiger nuts, maize even cheese and salami. NOTHING!!!!!

It was pointless to put out a huge amount of groundbait due to the weather, it was wet and very windy and on wednesday we even had a thunder storm, were I sat in my bivvy holding on to it to provent it from being blown away.

Thursday came I lost confident, I already prepared to go home with a blank........again I spoke to Tim a guy from the alien bait team and Frank the owner and asked for advice.
I was told to fish go more for visual bait, so I should try artificial pop up sweetcorn.....orange and yellow for the day and blue for the night.

Well I had nothing to loose, so I changed bait and cast out again into the gravel patch (by then I had enough of practise and managed to cast further out).
Bed time came and still nothing so I decided to leave the rods where they were over night.

Paul and Gary have given up on the carp by then and turned to dead bait for pike.....result 2 each between 5-8lb (Paul nearly had it's finger bitten off lol.....sea angler doesn't know how to handle a pike hehe).

Justin had one carp 18lb and a couple of line break, Mick had one line break, fish held botton, young Drew and Sam only a couple of pick ups and drop.....so as you can see it was a hard task.

After a restless thursday night ( pouring down with rain) friday morning 7.30 am I heard one of my rods screaming off..........seconds later I connected with the fish. This time I lifted my rod as high as I could, trying to stop the fish diving into the rocks.

After a short battle i managed to land this beauty


A nice mirror 37lb10oz......my new PB.....get in there!!!!!


Justin also had some luck and by saturday morning he caught 3 more carp, 20lb, 34lb and 40lb......the others remained without a fish.


It has been a great learning curve for me, to sit watch and learn about the lake and the carp in it.

It was a tough lake but a good one, as I needed to work hard on it, due to the fish not being use to commercial way of fishing and baits.
The lake contain enough of natural food so the fish are easily spooked by hooks, bait and even leds, as Justin proved, he changed the led to a pebble held on by an elastic band, which releases the pebble after a bite.

That way he managed to catch his last 3 fish.


The only downside of the lake was, no toilets and you had to drive half a mile to the tackle shop to have a shower AND EVEN pay 2 Euros for it huh.

I certainly would like to fish the lake again but I think next time I will do it for 2 weeks, due to it being so difficult.

[biggun]

What a good read and what a cracking looking fish! That must make up for the hard fishing and the bad weather. I'm so jealous!

[geejayy]

looks like your perseverence payed off twiddler.
much respect for not giving up

what a result!!!

it takes something special from fresh water to impress me and that certinally does, looks like may's fish of the month comp is cut and dried.

tight lines, gord.

[devondave]

great fish.. shame in a way that it was a hard lake but thats fishing i guess and i bet you have learnt tons for the next trip! i would love to go to france carp fishing as ive never been abroad!!! but what with money ect it looks along way off yet so i look forward to your 2 week report next year

[Droppenfish]

Fantastic fish that..I admire your stickability!!

[Fishing Forum Admin]

Cracking report and bloody well done one the caro

[BaggieRich]

Well done Twiddler.... A fantastic report and what a fish! Blanking champ huh? A high 30lber out of a tricky lake.... Time to pass the crown on me thinks!

Well done Claudia, I'm chuffed for ya!

[perch_king]

well done twiddle nice report and what a nice carp thats is and well done on new pb keep it up girl

[wellyfish]

well done with the p.b , very impressive

[aka bream king]

well done cracking mirror carp like your smart set up hope you have a good session next time lovly pb bk