A floater caught Roseau carp!
It seems to be common knowledge to British carp anglers that French carp are near impossible to temp off the surface. The reasons behind this I’m not sure of, at the end of the day carp are carp, right?
When myself and Bas arrived at Roseau, much like many other waters in France we were told, Zigs and floater fishing just didn’t produce. If I’m honest I didn’t think much of it as it wasn’t the first time id heard this sort of comment over here, however within weeks of the season opening fish were coming out to Zigs fished inches under the surface on black foam so I was pretty sure the floaters would produce in the right conditions.
Last week as I mentioned in a previous report we were lucky enough to get the rods out on peg 1 as the lake was not fully booked, we took several fish off the bottom on standard tactics but unfortunately nothing massive. On the Friday I wandered down to peg 1 to pack my shelter and rods away when I saw a good head of carp under the surface, with nothing to loose I grabbed the spod rod and a bag of mixers. After 2-3 spods the carp were having it, good n’ proper! I was in shock to be honest, I wasn’t expecting them to be so keen so quickly.
Anyway I continued spodding mixers for 20mins or so to get there confidence up at which point Bas had noticed the carp slurping floaters and had quickly set up a surface rig. Within minuets of casting out Bas was in, after a spirited battle on light gear a lovely scaled 17.00 mirror was been held up for a photograph. Result!
We carried on fishing for a couple of hours with the fish still confidently taking baits in the area. I had a bit of a nightmare, trying to surface fish with 3lb TC x-flites and 16lb fluorocarbon isn’t easy as I found out. I had no choice but to use my spodding reel with floating braid on coupled with my x-flites, still very unbalanced and far from ideal but at least I could present a bait effectively. I managed two takes in quick concession, unfortunately both resulting in hook pulls. I put it down to it just not been my day, although very pleased to see the tactic clearly works!
Id advise anybody coming over to us at Roseau this year to pack a nice light floater rod and a bag of mixers, it could buy you those few extra bites in the hot day time when most anglers are not catching.
Jack & Bas (Fishery Managers)
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