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.

Outside it’s one of the rare days we have had  rain in the last few weeks so I decided to sort out all the old photos we have stored away, it’s funny how quickly you forget the things you have done in the past.

I thought I would put a few on the blog and those of our guests that have been here will be able to see the condition of this place before and after we have done a lot of the work.

The first thing we had done was the lake dredged out and the banks cleared,and in the right hand picture you can see all the mud that came out the lake. After manys weeks of hard work and getting the mud flat using a hand rotivator we ended up with this.

We then had the gite built; this was obviously a major task that took a lot longer than we expected, but the results were worth the effort and the extra cost we spent on it & we now have a gite that we are proud to let our guests stay in.

We then had to upgrade all the fosse septic tanks for our house and the gite and this created a huge mess. It was another learning curve for Lesley and me as we helped with all the work to keep costs down. The pictures below show the sand filter being installed – the hole was 8mtrs x 4mtrs x 2mtrs deep and then back filled with pipes, special sand and rocks.

This month it will be 5 years since we arrived here and it’s been a steep learning curve and most certainly hard work, but I know we have both enjoyed the challenge and the opportunity to be able to create a business from scratch. If you go to our site you can see lots of photos of the finished gite and lakes, but as always we are looking at ways to improve and make La Bletiere a better place for people to stay.

We are asked a lot have we regretted coming here and we always say never; it gives us a great lifestyle and a better way of life that we could have had in the uk.

Would I recommend this to anybody else? Of course I would – it’s hard work and very physical at times but the rewards far outweigh the bad times.

Tight lines, John and Lesley

I promised to keep updating the site with how the work on the swims was going, but I regret to say that it has been slow due to the weather. I managed to get the mini digger down to the lake and ready at the swim to start work, but we then had the bad weather arrive.

In the 4 years we have been here this is the first year we have not been able to work before Christmas due to the weather, in fact the past years its really been February before the weather was too bad to work.

As you can see from this photo, even the local bird’s are struggling with this heron walking down the middle of the lake this morning. I hope for his sake he didn’t try to spear anything!

When I start work I will put more news on especially when its all finished to show the new swim.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Christmas and a great New Year,

Best wishes,
Lesley and John

As we now have a chance to start the clear up and get Bletiere looking good for next year, I thought I would just let our guests know what they can expect to see next year.

Looking look at the lake map; in swim B I intend to dig the bottom out just in front of the swim as its proved difficult to land fish because it’s shallow just in front – this will also stop any potential damage being done to the carp.

The other big works I will be doing are on swim C.  This is where the 40lb 6oz mirror came out, but it’s a high bank, so I intend to dig the bank out and lower it at least 2 foot to make fishing easier and more comfortable.
 
I will put photos on the site as work progresses and hopefully if I can master it some footage on Youtube.

John London, Bletiere owner

Bleteire’s first recorded leather carp at 28lb

As you’ll have already read on the Blog over the last week or so, husband & wife team Debbie & Pete have been fishing at Bletiere for the last 2 weeks.  They’ve enjoyed some great fishing and Debbie broke the ladies record 3 times in a week!

Not to be outdone on his last night Pete caught what is, we believe, the first leather to be caught at Bletiere… at 28lb it was a lovely fish in mint condition.

As owner John London commented;

“This is one fish we didn’t know we had.  When you have over 100 carp delivered after a while you forget what you have seen! Hopefully there may be a few more surprises to come out.”

The fact that Debbie caught more than Pete early in the session doesn’t seem to have put too much strain on their marriage – they’ve just booked for another 2 weeks next year!  Will Pete get his own back we wonder?