Angling Lines Blog

33lb

Fishing Monument between the 6th – 13th of April Matthew Cumming’s group caught;

Four 30′s to 33.4 .
Ten 20′s to 29.8.
A 19.12 common and a small but stunning 17.11 mirror .

Best tactics/bait/rigs: Cell boilies some dumb bell, others topped with corn fed over bed of pellet

General comments: Le monument is an ideal venue as the fish are challenging to catch but more than catchable.
I would recommend the food package as the food is excellent and it saves a lot of hassle.

For more information on Monument follow the link - Carp Fishing in France

Driving down for my solo trip at Le Monument,  it felt nothing like Spring with the car temperature showing a measly 5 degrees. Still, I was looking forward to the trip as I had heard very good things about Le Monument so I was eager to see whether I could fool a couple of the big fish in the lake.

Terry with a 31lb Mirror

On arriving at the Lake I was met by owner Mark who showed me around the venue which is almost two lakes divided by a long central island. He recommended a swim called The Orchard which was on the left hand side of the lake, but as the wind – a bitterly cold easterly – was driving into this corner, I decided on a swim at the other end of the bank. The main catching area was at the end of the island by a bridge which, when crossed, enabled tight baiting to both the hot-spot and the island margins. I set up and by around 7.30 was fishing three rods to both island margins and the bridge spot. continue reading…

Monument Carp Fishing Lake in France

Paul Cooper, one of our expert Field Testers, recently answered a few queries about Monument Lake, a must read if you’re going out to the venue this year!

Hi Paul, We’re visiting monument lake this spring and I was just wondering if there was any advice/tips you could give? When you were fishing ‘the pads’ swim did you fish 3 rods to the island or is open water generally better there? With there being 3 of us we were thinking to all select a swim and fish it for the full week, do you think that’s the best option?  continue reading…

47lb 5oz carp caught in March this year 

My last visit to the Brittany’s, Monument Lake was back in March this year, when I saw out the throes of winter. The trees bore no foliage and the water was as cold as ice and yet I still managed to winkle out a few carp to 47lb 5oz. My departure from the lake saw the coming of spring, and the arrival of a fishing colleague of mine, Pat Gillet.

Pat took full advantage of the opportunity of a warm spell by catching over 20 carp in that spring week.

Pat with a couple of his many carp caught the week after my departure

It is now the end of September and I have taken the opportunity for a revisit to Monument Lake.

With my friend and fishing colleague, Paul Brooks, I arrived at the lake around midday on the Saturday. Now having done all my homework on the 1^st visit to the lake, I was fully aware of the depths and lake bed makeup, however I still needed to lead to investigate the presence of weed in the lake. The weed was very brittle and broke away as soon as the lead was pulled through it and was only present in the shallower parts of the lake leaving the deeper water weed free.

Paul settled onto the orchard swim which has deep water right in front of it and was clear of weed through out the swim and I settled on the more weedy area of the pads swim.

The weed in front of me was patchy right the way across to within a rod length of the island, so some accurate casting was called for.

I selected 3 areas to fish within a yard off the margins of the island which gave me depths of around 4 feet.

Paul again selected areas off the island margin, but at the side of some obvious fishy looking snags.

You can read the full article here

Carp fishing in France at Monument

Lesson 1

You have spent a year planning this carp fishing trip; so make sure you allow enough time to get to the ferry!

The impressive Pont de Normandie

I should know better after all the Angling Lines trips I’ve been on but an hour’s spare time always seemed enough in the past.  After leaving home and driving only half an hour we hit the A14 and stopped!  In fact we didn’t move for over an hour, just long enough to miss the ferry!

We did manage to squeeze on the next one and after a relaxed lunch on board we were soon on the A16 heading for Abbeville then down to Le Havre and crossing the spectacular Pont de Normandie spanning the river Seine to Honfleur.  We were soon heading for Rennes on empty auto routes and onto our hotel for the night.

I had booked a twin room in a Campanile online well in advance and paid only 47 Euros.  I always travel on the Friday and book a hotel close to the lake. This gives you plenty of time to chill out, enjoy some fabulous food and wine and get a good nights rest. Saturday morning and you are refreshed, wide awake and fit for a weeks fishing, after all this is a holiday.  You also have plenty of time to do all of your food shopping on route to the lake.

Le Monument was easy to find with the directions from Angling Lines and Mark the owner was there to greet us as we pulled into the lake.

The lake is unusual; split by a long island with giant rocks emerging from the water in one half. The same granite rocks form a row of what appear to be megalithic standing stones, but were in fact created when the stones were extracted from the lake during construction.

Mark is a mine of information and was soon updating us…

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

Carp Fishing in France