Angling Lines blog

By Pat Gillett

I have just come back from an interesting weeks fishing with Paul Cooper on the Angling Lines Venue, Island Lake.

Island Lake is a mature looking Gravel Pit of approximately 25 acres in the Champagne Region of France; roughly 3 ¾ hours drive from Calais. As the name suggests it has a large island and 4 or 5 bays along with a lot of weed and underwater features.

The lake is totally different to most commercial French fisheries as it is relatively lightly stocked for the size of the venue. Most commercial French Lakes are overstocked and so the fish become virtually dependant on anglers’ baits, which more or less guarantees you catching plenty of fish. The fish in Island Lake are of an excellent average size and it would appear that they have reached and are maintaining these weights by feeding on the abundance of natural food in the lake. This can lead to very challenging fishing, but to me this makes it all the more interesting and rewarding. continue reading…

by Gareth Watkins

No one can be unaware these days of ‘Global warming’, with conferences held regularly by ecological groups, scientists and governments the problem is a genuine and serious one. It is also one of the main factors in the increase of weed growth in many of our carp fishing lakes across northern Europe and in my case northern France.

Add to this the intensive agriculture in many parts of France, with its heavy use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers and you can soon see why weed is becoming more of a problem every year.

There are many types of common pond weeds that we can see proliferating in our waters. Some are denser and harder to deal with than others. They do though offer a safe haven for fish and abundant food store.

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