Discover essential carp tactics and watercraft skills, including reading water, choosing the right spot and adjusting strategies to increase your chances of a catch.
French carp fishing holidays, and in particular those provided by Angling Lines, seem to be heading towards the top end of the big carp waters in France. Bigger lakes, with lower stocking density, meaning bigger and better carp for the industrious angler. This obviously means that we have to work just that bit harder to […]
How confident are you about fishing a 3 acre lake, or maybe a 4 acre lake or even a 10 acre lake? Most anglers would say that they’d know the features to bait up to:- snags, overhanging trees, island margins, the edge of weed beds to name but a few. Now lets increase the size of […]
Many anglers turn up at the lake, spend hours meticulously studying the water for signs of fish, settle on a peg and chuck out the marker float. They find a bar or area of gravel and pop the marker up. Now to get the rods and spod out! I still see numerous anglers just casting […]
Question: I am fishing a 3 acre lake which I have caught plenty of fish from with a good stock of doubles and 20’s. It is shallow with most areas being 3-4ft or less. The bottom is mainly silty with some harder areas in places. There is a large island in the middle of the […]
Recently an angler heading out to Beaurepaire asked for some baiting advice from our blogger Pat Gillett, who recently spent a week at the venue (you can read about his trip here). We thought it would be worth sharing Pat’s indepth reply… Hi, First of all let me say, that I am sure you will enjoy […]
Paul asks; What month would be best to book for fishing in France? I think you could ask this question of 100 people and get a different answer each time. Usually April through to October is the main season. March and November can be less reliable due to the weather which will affect the water temperatures and consequently the […]
Shaun Harrison explains his gripe with the TIMS (Thoughtless Inconsiderate Mallet Society) and offers some advice… This year I decided to spend a little more time on a local venue before the otters move in and wipe the fish out. Unfortunately the so called do-gooders are still releasing otters into an environment struggling to cater for their […]
A great account by Jason Rider of four years fishing 14 acre Boux, set in the Morvan Regional Park. Famously the lake where Tim Paisley had his first fifty, it’s still a haven for carp anglers to this day… 2008 My first impressions of Domaine De Boux in April 2008 were nice enough but I had no […]
Being totally addicted to getting out there and wetting a line, a lot of my angling has to involve very short sessions after or before work if I am able to get my ‘fix’. This past week has seen me on the bank 3 times for short two to three hour sessions, but during those […]
Here is a question Shaun Harrison received about silkweed which he thought would be of benefit to share… Shaun, I’ve got a question about silkweed which I’d be very grateful if you could answer when you have a spare moment as I’m sure you’re a very busy man. In your opinion how do you think […]
More often than not we all come across a water where the carp simply will not feed away from the far margin, over hanging trees, or snags. Cast short of your target and you may as well leave the rods on the bank. Generally the reason for this is through angling pressure or the over […]
Late winter and early spring is one of my favourite times to be out on the bank. With the longer daylight hours it seems the whole of the natural world knows it’s time to start altering their habits once again and everything slowly unfolds back into life. I am sure the longer hours of daylight […]
Steve Bedford goes through the basics of carp behaviour, areas to fish to and different weed types… Carp naturally prefer slow moving rivers, streams, canals and still waters. You’ll often find that carp in still waters tend to grow bigger and have deeper bodies than those in moving waters and carp in rivers often grow […]
More and more of you are heading out to France for an early season session around March and April, fantastic times for fishing. Occasionally however this means you can be arriving at a lake with still fluctuating water levels. So what can we do when faced with more water than we bargained for? The first […]
We’ve resurrected this post from a couple of years back, there’s some really wise advice in this short list of tips. Written by Lee Johnston, owner of the beautiful Glehias. 1. Information, Information, Information. Always speak to the Lake owner and find out as much as you can before your visit. Email or phone as many questions as […]
Does resting a swim increase your catch rate? On certain waters and situations I believe that it does. Now, what do I mean by resting a swim? Basically, it means removing all lines out of a swim for some considerable time to allow the carp to gain confidence in feeding on a baited area. I have used […]
How many of you go carp fishing and know exactly what fish are in the venue that you are fishing? This doesn’t always have to be the case, if you are willing to venture off the beaten track or to fish large lightly stocked waters you can soon get that ‘sense of mystery’ back into […]
Over the last couple of years I have built up a reasonable size library of Angling books and on a number of species. Now I don’t just buy new/modern books but also old ones by the likes of Richard Walker etc, as I believe it gives you a really rounded overview of our favourite pastime. […]
How safe is the use of backleads. Can I use them in every event? Definitely not! The use of backleads have been about for a long time now. It would be during my time on the Fox Pool that I first used backleads to pin down my main line to the lake bed. I […]
A simple question to all the Bloggers: How often should you re-cast a rod/bait in a day? I have no hard and fast rules on this one but generally speaking like to leave my swim as undisturbed as possible and pay far more attention to the time I re-cast. Now I am a firm believer […]
