The deepest corner<\/span>\nWhen we were packing to leave Brocard Large my overwhelming feeling was that I didn\u2019t want to go home. I would have quite happily stayed for another week. In over twenty years of French fishing I think it\u2019s fair to say that I\u2019ve visited hundreds of waters. Wet, dry, hot and freezing cold at every time of the year I\u2019ve enjoyed it all. That said there are some waters that have that indefinable something that makes you want to go back. Brocard Large is like that. It has some much of what I\u2019m looking for. Its spacious (39 acres), its not crowded (only eight swims), and it\u2019s beautiful and peaceful (surrounded by forest in deep in the Champagne region. Add to that the usual quality Bachelier carp, with commons, mirrors including their incredibly beautiful scaly fish and grass carp and you have a winning formula.<\/p>\n
It is remote and because of that does not have the usual facilities of a French holiday venue. The toilet facilities are basic; there is no running water or showers onsite. There are showers offsite a few miles away. We did not find this an inconvenience and combined the shower run with our shopping trips to top up with the essential local food and wine. \u00a0After all you are on a French holiday and it would be a shame to miss out on all that\u2019s best about the region. The wildness and tranquillity are part of Brocard Large\u2019s attraction and we thought a short journey was a small price to pay.<\/p>\n
So what is the lake like and how did we fish it. As I said earlier the lake is around 39 acres with an island in one corner.\u00a0 There are eight very well spaced swims giving every angler plenty of water, and providing lots of variation with dense overhanging tree lined banks, open water, reed beds and island margins. Depths vary from a couple of feet to over six in the bowl between swims five and six. A little work with a marker rod will soon locate silt, clay and some clear hard patches on the bottom. Location was definitely not a problem while we were there with the carp launching themselves out of the lake on a very regular basis. It wasn\u2019t a case finding fish but narrowing down the possible spots to place a bait!\u00a0 In fact as the week progressed a number of good carp were caught sometimes very quickly by just casting pate wrapped hookbaits at showing fish.<\/p>\n Swim 5, a double swim at the end of the lake<\/span>\nAfter some debate Shaun and I decided to fish swim 5 a double swim at the end of the lake.\u00a0 We chose this as it seemed to give us many more options to fish.\u00a0 It covered the shallowest bays, the deepest water open water, a distant island and sheltered corners, a perfect place to start.<\/span><\/p>\n A chunky 27lber<\/span>\nI don\u2019t like filling in the lake with bait on the first day. I prefer observing the fish in the area I\u2019m fishing and making an assessment on numbers, if they are feeding and how heavily. You can always adjust the level of feed to match your results. My right hand rod went on a lightly baited area shared with Shaun, the left rod on the far edge of the deeper bowl in front of a Norfolk reed bed. My last rod went out to the left hand side of the island cast straight at the area where we had spotted a fish roll only minutes before, the hookbait and the lead were wrapped in boilie paste to enhance the attraction as there were no other offerings in the area. I didn\u2019t have to wait long and after about an hour the line tightened, the rod tip twitched to the left, and then a carp decided it was time to leave the vicinity in a hurry and headed for the island.\u00a0 I love fishing shallow waters; the fight is so visual. The carp are soon on the surface with bow waves running off their backs, zig zagging left and right at speed. This one put up a solid fight but pretty soon a muscular 27lb mirror was slipping over the net cord.\u00a0 What a great start, the first of many I hoped and as you can imagine my confidence was pretty high.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n| \u00a0<\/span><\/td>\n | <\/span><\/td>\n | <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n| I\u2019ll be back<\/span><\/td>\n | 30lb 4oz<\/span><\/td>\n | Martin getting creative<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nothing happened for the rest of the night which did come as a surprise. Shaun had a fish early next morning but my rods were motionless, and continued that way throughout the next day.\u00a0 I found a new location for my successful roaming rod. There was a hard spot to the right of the island at 88 yards, which I lightly baited with Naked Hemp and Quest Baits Magnum Duo. I\u2019d noticed that the baits were smelling silty and started rehydrating the boilies in the hemp liquid to stop them absorbing the smell. I spombed the mixture out, the hemp would also I hope preoccupy the carp and keep them in the catching zone a little bit longer. It seemed to work and at three the following morning I landed a 25lber. At four there was a drop back, but I didn\u2019t contact with the fish and wound in a rig with no lead.\u00a0 At eight a 31lb common sprinted towards me faster than I could wind in, it had covered fifty yards before I caught up with it.\u00a0\u00a0 The fish were all hooked on what I was now calling my \u201cugly rig.\u201d I knew before the trip it was a barbless only venue and ordered some wide gape short shank hooks online.\u00a0 Unfortunately I\u2019d not looked at them before I set off. The wire thickness was incredible and would pull a barge, I tied up some size 4\u2019s and they looked almost comical so I tied up 6\u2019s and fished them with a wafter to try and counteract some of the mighty weight of the metal. Amazingly they were working.<\/p>\n The wind was WSW and the heavy cloud cover was keeping the conditions mild. Fish were showing on my left hand rod now and I felt confident enough to start baiting.\u00a0 A short walk to the corner and the hookbait was in easy catapult range and a dozen large pouches of Magnum Duo were spread loosely around the area, followed by a few more from the stick to spread them further.\u00a0 The rain started today consigning us occasionally to the bivvy. Through the doorway I could see by now that autumn was closing in and the forest around us was starting to gain its almost New England reds and golds. I flicked on the radio and scanned the stations eventually landing on an English language station that ironically wanted to teach me to speak English. C\u2019est la vie, I could think of worse places to be.<\/p>\n \n\n\n| <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| It\u2019s fair to say we enjoy our food<\/span><\/td>\n | Our spectacular chicken curry<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I think it\u2019s fair to say we do like our food and tonight was a belter. We created a spectacular chicken curry in a couple of pans, then satisfied we relaxed and watched and waited. That evening and the following morning can only be described as manic!\u00a0 It rained and boy did it rain. It battered us continuously for hours. Shaun started off the action with a 40+ PB common, which I followed with the first of three thirty plus commons punctuated by a very long and very angry grass carp when the rain was at its peak. Shaun was there choreographing the whole event plaiting and unplaiting rods and lines as the carp rushed from left to right in the shallow water. The highlight for me though was a brute of a mirror that weighed in at over 42 lbs, drenched but what an amazing night!<\/p>\n \n\n\n| <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n | <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n| 32lb Grass Carp<\/span><\/td>\n | 33lb<\/span><\/td>\n | 33lb 12oz<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n On Wednesday Martin the Angling Lines cameraman turned up to shoot some video for the website. The deluge had stopped although it was still incredibly dark and cloudy and we still had the stills to shoot for the website. Not an attractive look; we really needed the sun to shine. Point a camera at an angler and it\u2019s usually guaranteed that he won\u2019t catch a thing. The fishing gods were thankfully on our side today and Martin was there to film the capture of a brace of mirrors, one each for me and Shaun. If I remember correctly Shaun\u2019s was an upper twenty and mine was a slate grey scraper thirty with a ridiculously large tail giving one hell of a scrap.<\/p>\n 42lb<\/span>\n Shaun’s forty<\/span>\nOur cooking tends to get a bit imaginative on the bank and tonight creation was a chorizo sausage pasta concoction washed down with the obligatory red wine followed by Normandy pear flan and cr\u00e8me freche. Martin did seem to enjoy it!<\/p>\n Six a.m. the urgent cry of my buzzer wakes me only for the hook to pull, but later that day the disappointment was sweetened by yet another thirty plus common. My day quietened somewhat with only liners for me. Shaun continued to catch with two more thirties and a twenty coming to his rods accompanied by a spooky owl\u2019s chorus from the surrounding forest.<\/p>\n Yet another 30+ common<\/span>\n
\n<\/span>On the last day we managed to sprint around and photograph the swims and film a video tour of the lakes swims for Martin which is on the site now (you can watch it here<\/a>).\u00a0 Shaun continued to catch, with a fish from our shared central baited area and one from the shallows to his right. Strangely the shared baited area didn\u2019t work for me at all. So looking back what do I think of Brocard Large?\u00a0 I love the location, the carp are stunners, its spacious with only eight swims on 39 acres, there are no \u201chot pegs\u201d. I think you could have a great weeks fishing from any swim on the lake, and I want to go back there; which really says it all.<\/p>\nCheers
\nRon Key<\/p>\n For more information on Brocard Large follow the link –<\/em> Carp Fishing France<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normally when travelling to France on a field test trip I write my article as soon as I return. It\u2019s straight into my notes and then onto the PC to write and to download and pore over hundreds of photographs of the carp, swims and facilities.\u00a0 This trip shouldn\u2019t have been any different but I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17826,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1034,997,1049],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brocard-large","category-field-testing","category-ron-key"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17799"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27882,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17799\/revisions\/27882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglinglines.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
| | | |