Angling Lines blog

by Lee Johnson

Being a lake owner doesn’t always mean you get to fish whenever you like. This May, I did manage to get a few days fishing in on Lake Lauren here at La Gléhias and decided to go for a Catfish or two as they are hooked often, but rarely landed as the angler on the other end is generally fishing for Carp with Carp rigs. I was also keen to see the progress of them because they get banked so infrequently. In fact the bigger they get the less we get to see them; I can only estimate the smallest to be 48lb and the biggest around 65lb.

The three Cats’ were introduced to keep the number of smaller fish down so I knew I had a bit of a challenge on my hands as I don’t believe they ever go very hungry due to the number of small Tench and Roach.

After witnessing Tommy Chantler’s success with squid in 2008, this had to be my first choice for bait. My first small problem was that I had to buy my squid from a fishmonger, not in a tackle shop. This meant that I had great slabs of squid meat instead of small whole squids.I tied myself some rigs with size one hooks on 50lb bs braid with the hairs around 3 inches long to stitch on the baits which I had now trimmed down to strips of 2 inches wide by 10 inches long – I even cut tentacles into them! The squid off cuts were mixed into some 3kg of large halibut and carp pellets along with about 1kg of broken up Quests Liver B8 boilies. I then added a cupful of lake water and let this steep for an hour to make it cloud instantly in the lake. This absolutely stunk and I was certain the cats would have no problems finding it.

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Alan Smith wrote;

I am taking my son with me to Malvoisine and was interested to find out if the fish are not all caught by fishing to the far bank as he`s not the best caster in the world and we don’t have a baitboat.  I was hoping to bait an open water area no more than 40 metres out for him.  Any advice? 

Hi Alan,

Malvoisine is a large water and has so far received very little pressure. There is a good head of fish and previous groups have had over 100 fish in a week.

While the far margin is a good spot, and in some areas of the lake it is not very far away, Shaun Harrison had a good number of his fish fishing at around the range you are suggesting.

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During the long hot summer days, and we, it seems are heading for a long hot summer, with temperatures soaring to over 35 degrees this week, sitting behind a set of rods waiting for it to happen is more likely than not to end up in a blank session. You may well pick up the odd cruising fish, or get action at night, but with night hours now at their shortest, the time span is at its minimum at this time of the year.

So what is the answer?

Well to do what most anglers new to the sport don’t even consider…Go and find the fish! Using one’s eyes is an aspect of carping many seem to over look.

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