Angling Lines Blog

John London is the owner of Bletiere and through this Blog section he’s going to keep a diary of the daily life of a French carp lake owner.

Having had a very mild and dry winter up to now we’ve managed to get the lake spring clean finished a lot earlier than usual.  This is really good as last year due to the snow and wet we working up to the week before our first guests arrived in March.

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We have strimmed all the banks and raked them.  It’s something I always do as it encourages the wild flowers to grow and helps keep the nettles and brambles down – why is it that weeds always grow and flowers sometimes struggle?

We have cut back all the trees around the lake as these sometimes caused problems for guests with the wind blowing the line over branches, but still left plenty to give a bit of a challenge to reach those fish.

Today we worked on the house swim and cut down all the old bulrushes.  I put on my waders and went in to clear their roots that were spreading across the lake edge and sticking out from the end which made landing fish harder.

I also cleared all the iris and bulrushes that were slowly blocking up the swim to the right, so there is now more room to land fish and also to put your pods or bank sticks.

I also spent some time picking up some rocks that were close in and may have caused problems.  I moved any I kicked and took them out the lake.

Tomorrow I will start my trips up to the local saw mill and get a few trailer loads of wood chip to top up the swims and help to keep the mud down and fishing gear cleaner.  It also helps to keep the bank side noise down.

We have been feeding the fish all winter and over the last week they have been very active and feeding heavily.  This will hopefully reflect in the weights this year, and hopefully that first carp over 45lb will come out.

Hopefully anyone taking advantage of our early season offers will have some good fish out and if they continue to feed as they are now I can even see a new lake record coming out early on.

Tight lines and we will publish more as the big tidy up continues,

Best wishes,

John and Lesley, Bletiere

The ducks back!

As I promised before Christmas I will this weekend (28/29^TH Jan) start to publish the air and water temperatures every week here at Bletiere.  You can follow it here.

I know a lot of anglers found it useful to see what the weather was doing here in France and it also gives you a guide to how close to potential spawning we are as you follow the rise in  temperature.  At least it will give you a rough idea if the carp are likely to start spawning near your visit.

I have taken a look at last years on the forum as its still there.

I started it in February and it was 6 degrees air and 8 degrees in the lake.  Today it is 9 degrees in the air and 10 degrees in the lake so a big difference.

As long as we do not get the usual cold weather in February it’s looking good as it will get the fish feeding with the warmer weather we get in March, and hopefully for any lucky anglers taking advantage of our early fishing offers  they will get off to a good start.

Tight lines, John

La Bletiere

Now that the last of our Bletiere guests has left it’s time to start the big clear up and make sure we’re ready to go next spring with everything looking good and refreshed.

Lesley has started to get the veg plot cleared and get the cover over it to kill off the weeds and get the soil warming up quicker in the spring.  She also spent a few days last week getting all the pruning done and the flower borders weeded and fed for the winter. Lesley is already planning what is going to be moved and replanted and one of the things is to get the creepers to grow up the barn walls – for some reason they don’t seem to want to grow up them, everywhere else but not there!

Once Christmas is out of the way she will then start on the gite and get it all cleaned up and redecorated where needed and make sure everything is ready to go for the new season.

I have now started to get the lake banks cleared – this is the biggest job around the lake for me.  Those that have been here know that I like to keep the banks looking natural. When we first got here I left the banks to grow and never did any clearing but I found that the weeds and nettles took over and the wild flowers struggled to grow, so that left no other choice but to cut and rake all the banks.

I try to encourage the wild flowers as this obviously attracts the butterflies and other insects which a lot of our guests comment on, it’s certainly good to sit and watch the wild life, & it’s also good for the bees.
It always amazes me how quickly in the spring all the banks grow back.  As the pictures show it all looks a bit messy now, but by April next year all the plants are growing and by May it looks like nothing has been done.  I will even fill in all the Daisy the dog holes where she’s tried to catch the voles.

I also tidy the swims up and weed and them & get about 15 cubic meters of chip bark to top up all the swims & replace any of the wooden edging that has rotted.

One of my experiments this winter will be with the 80 foot long seine net I now have and I will be spending some time in the lake trying to reduce the silver fish.  This is to ensure that as much food as possible goes to the carp and not the roach.  I’m lucky that our neighbor has a large lake next door and he is happy for me to put the roach in there – he is not a fisherman and is happy to let them live in there. I tried last year to do the same and I was lucky that two of our friends come over and helped.  We were quite successful but a longer net is going to be better… but harder to pull through the water!  I will post a blog when I try and attach some photos of how I get on and what we get… if anything of course!
Well that’s all for now and this is just an overview of what we do in the winter so all of you that email me and ask if I am having a good rest doing nothing this is what really goes on… and obviously a bit of fishing when its mild!

May we take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a very happy New Year!

John and Lesley

A personal thank you from Bletiere owner, John London, to his 2011 customers.

As we come to the end of another season I will just take time to review what has been a great year for us as the fish and catches just get better every year.

I have to start by saying a big well done to Darran who was our last booking and came over with his son Jamie and his friend Jack.  The feedback is on the site but I could not do a review without a comment on the new lake record at 43lb 10oz… and they all broke their pb’s.

The lake record was broken a few times this year, but each time by only a few ounces.  This was encouraging as it showed the fish were putting on weight and feeding well, but Darrans was the icing on the cake with the mirror that broke the previous record by nearly 2 pounds!  Each time the record increased I knew that there was bigger to come out and I still believe we have a mid forty in there just waiting to be caught.

Next year should be another good year especially as we now have 5 different 40′s that have been caught and with with winter feeding campaign just started they can only get bigger.

It was also good to see the high number of 30lb fish that came out.  Some weeks saw a big hit on these and some were fish that had never been seen before, and all the fish were in pristine condition as the feedback shows.

I must mention in this review Roy,Vic and Baz who had the biggest catch of the year with 75 fish out!  That was made up of 18 x 30′s and 27 x 20′s… a great weeks fishing by the lads which goes to show that steady feeding does work here.

A lot of our guests caught big numbers continue reading…