Angling Lines blog

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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I think most carpers will agree cooking on the bank is a pain in the proverbial… It’s bad enough, if you can’t get your car to the peg, just walking your gear round, without dealing with bags of tins, pasta & water, stoves, pans, plates, etc..

For those who have been carping a while and have read the great Rod H’s works you’ll know that the pub and the local Indian were all part and parcel of the fun and enjoyment of a good carp session. They just couldn’t miss the pub!! Or the meal afterwards no matter what water they were on.

To catch fish, you just have to be fishing in the right place at the right time, but this doesn’t necessarily mean sitting it out without a break.
So my advice for those on a carp session to France is to forget the chore of cooking and find yourself a nice little local restaurant or café. Most rural French towns and villages will have one and often a good meal will cost as little as 10 Euros. So you can quite literally eat out every day for less than a food package on a lot of lakes.

I was first introduced to this idea by Shaun Harrison when we shot the Remy video a couple of years ago. Come 11:30 am in came the rods and a group of scruffy carp anglers made themselves as presentable as possible before heading off to a local restaurant, in this case near the close by Lac d’Orient called the “L’Orée d’Orient”, which as it happens and by pure coincidence, was another haunt of Mr. Hutchinson when he was fishing at Orient. There are even photos of him on the wall. Here we were able to enjoy a reasonabley priced meal and a beer or wine in a very civilised manner.

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Philip Parker wrote:

I will be tackling a venue that contains a good head of large grass carp. The lake itself is quite shallow 3′-4′ and around nine acres in size. Can anyone offer some advice on trying to catch them. Of all the fish I’ve caught this one has eluded me. Surface baits are not an option at this venue. Any advice would be well received and appreciated.

Hi Philip,

Grass carp are lovely looking fish and a strange species as they are not easy to target. They will get caught on boilies, but this is more often than not in a water that has little or no weed. In my experience on heavily weeded waters they very rarely get caught at all.

Being basically plant eaters the best way to go about attracting them to your swim is with a plant based bait. I have found maize and sweet corn to be very good in this respect. If you put down a large bed of these particles you have a fair chance you’ll get the fish move on to it.

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Robert Fisher wrote:

Please could you tell me the average spawning dates in France.

Hi Robert,

This is a very difficult question to reply to as there are so many factors involved. Much depends on the depth of the lake, the amount of sun it recieves and other factors that might effect water temperature such as springs, river inlets etc…

As a general rule carp are unlikely to spawn before mid May, but the period can extend into June or even July on deeper more shaded gravel pits.

On particularly cool summers the fish might not spawn properly at all, indeed if this happens on a number of consequtive years it can even lead to fish deaths.

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