Angling Lines blog

For the brave ones who’ve crossed the channel in search of French winter carp there’s certainly been good rewards.

Ian Lewis & 3 mates have just had a great week at Vaux (17th – 24th January) taking 6 mirrors, 4 being in the 30s, biggest 38.07; 2 commons, biggest 21.06; and 7 pike, biggest 25lb.

Chris Dagg took advantage of owning a carp lake by putting in a short afternoon session at Notaires & he was rewarded with a 25lb pristine mirror. You can read his report here.

And finally, but definitely not least, how can we forget Troy McLeans 75.02 from Laroussi in mid November – catch report here.

Who says they don’t come out in winter!

Taken from Carp-Talk Xtra

So why on earth do we have a picture of the new (1,457lb) World Record pumpkin in this week’s Carp-Talk Xtra?

Well firstly it was grown by Mehdi Daho who is the owner of the popular Angling Lines venues Old Oaks & Laroussi and secondly he decided to put the outer flesh of the fruit to good use and what could possibly be better than turning it into a water going vessel capable of holding up to six people!

He then put the  pumpkin/boat to better use, using it to land a couple of hard fighting carp from his own lake, the biggest of which was this 40lb specimen below. The fish fell for a Quest Baits Fruity Trifle boilie.

Hi, what has happened to Island lake?  I was hoping to book again for next year but didn’t see it listed, cheers Simon.

David Keep replied;

Yes you’re right Simon, we will not be taking bookings for Island Lake in 2010.  We were unhappy about the management at the lake so we agreed to go our separate ways.  They are still taking bookings themselves & I recently saw their advert in Carp Talk.

As an alternative have you considered Laroussi? It did a 75lb’er just a few weeks ago!

Andy Reeves asked;

Please could you tell me the best way to have some tips on fishing Laroussi with a bait boat in April and what spots. Thank you.

David Keep answered;

Hi Andy, first thing is that you can’t use a baitboat on Laroussi unless you’ve booked the lake exclusively.  I’ll assume this is the case.  I’ve fished Laroussi 3 times now & been able to use a baitboat twice.  To be honest I’m not sure they give you a great advantage.  Almost all of the fishing at Laroussi is within easy casting distance and the fish are very cute – if they see big piles of bait they’re likely to give it a wide berth.  My tactic has been to pick 3 spots within casting range and use relatively small amounts of bait – perhaps a PVA bag around the hookbait and then around 20 boilies scattered around by catapult.  If you do use the baitboat then take some 10mm boilies.. they obviously don’t see a lot of those particularly at range.  Here’s one of my fish from April this year, so you can see it is possible to catch them.  Good luck… it’s a great lake!

I caught this monster at Laroussi on 15th November in swim La Plage.

I was fishing 65 yards to my right into open water and at about 1 am Sunday morning had a slow take.  40 minutes later and this monster came into my net!

I could not believe the size of this carp, I was speechless!

I wanted to beat my personal best of 45lb and I did it by 30lb… Wow! “Pinch me” was all I could keep saying!

It was a very strong fish in perfect condition …………pinch me

Troy McLean