Details of your catches:

Only 5 fish, nice clean fish, 46lb, 30lb, 29lb, 27lb, 16lb

Your best tactics/bait/rigs:

Particle and boilie mix

Were the facilities what you expected?

Yes but toilet needs fixing to the floor

Were you happy with them?

Yes but as above

Would you recommend the venue to a friend?

Yes if the coypu are dealt with, couldn't fish at night due to them biting your lead and rig off completely!!!!

Would you recommend the services to a friend?

Yes

General Comments:

Nice place but ruined by the coypu!!!! *Angling Lines note* Thank you for your feedback. The coypu population hadn't been an issue previously, however the bailiff is now actively managing this so it does not continue to cause an issue.

Details of your catches:

Fishing was very quiet on all the local lakes due to very cold nights. I caught no carp. No takes even. Renarde has water depth of only 0.7 to 0.8 meters, thats only 70 to 80 cm or about 30 inches for almost the entire lake. There were no deviations from this in swim 3. 20 + lines going across water of this depth pushes fish to the margins. This is less than advertised.

Your best tactics/bait/rigs:

Do not fish in swim 3. The other swims have margins to fish to which is the only way carp were caught during this week. Swim 3 only has a bit of island to fish to which the Coypu make unfishable. The other anglers were all Dutch and some of them had fished Renarde before. They came prepared for margin fishing. Two groups had proper boats (this was accepted despite it being against the rules) and all had bait boats which are essential for this venue. Pop ups over a few particles seemed to do the trick tight up against the margins.

Were the facilities what you expected?

Yes. But the batteries kept running out and there was no hot water on the leaving day (freezing cold shower before driving home). Take solar charger for your batteries to be safe.

Were you happy with them?

Yes

Would you recommend the venue to a friend?

No. There is not enough about the lake to make it interesting. Depths much shallower than advertised. There are lots of better lakes to visit. *Angling Lines note* Thank you for your feedback. Whilst water levels do fluctuate over the season, we agree that our depths on the website were too high and we have amended this.

Would you recommend the services to a friend?

Yes. Always a great service.

General Comments:

Details of your catches:

It was cold! Very cold for the time of year and the pressure was sky high so not the best fishing conditions. To give you an idea the previous and following weeks to our stay were 10 degrees warmer at night. As you can imagine this made the fishing very tough. The previous week the group managed 25 fish. Myself and the group fishing the lake this week were still blanking and it was now Wednesday. I started the week fishing peg 5 and the guys the previous week caught by fishing to the small island up the left at around 200 yards. After 96 hours I realised that I needed to change my approach so I started using winter tactics. This was small snow man rigs and a dozen broken boilies in the hopper dropped into this same area. I wasn’t seeing as much activity as I would like in my swim but had to hope there would be fish in the area so I just fished for 1 bite at a time. Thankfully that night I had a bite around 3:20am which turned out to be a 21lb 8oz common and I was off the mark. I was still not happy with my area and with the binoculars I could see very subtle fish activity towards peg 1 so imagine how happy I was when the other group of guys decided to pull off early after another 24 hours of blanking. I didn’t waste any time in moving and that night I had 5 bites landing 3 fish of 24lb, 21lb 8oz and 28lb using exactly the same tactics. The 2 lost fish were to snags as I was fishing 2 rods to a snag tree over on the right bank. Despite fishing tight clutches and locked down rods one of them still managed to get into the sunken branches. The second lost fish was due to my alarm packing up and not even knowing I had a bit on an open water rod. By the time I realised the fish had kited around and gotten into deep snags on the right margin. Unfortunately the fish quickly realised that there was no pressure elsewhere on the lake and they quickly pushed out of the area. I stayed put as I only had 1 night to go and had to pack up early doors. I managed 1 more bite that last night and had a lovely 24lb common to finish on. Final tally was 5 fish: 21lb 8oz common 24lb mirror 21lb 8oz common 28lb mirror 24lb 12oz common

Your best tactics/bait/rigs:

Small snow man rigs with yellow toppers dropped with 10 - 12 crushed boilies which had been soaking in lake water and Amino 365 liquid. Size 4 Korda wide gape barbless hooks, 30lb dark matter braided hooklink fished as a blow back rig (see pics)

Were the facilities what you expected?

Facilities were actually better than expected

Were you happy with them?

Much better than I was expecting if I’m honest. Luckily we didn’t need a fridge as the one on site was actually way too small for the size of groups allowed on the fishery so bare this in mind.

Would you recommend the venue to a friend?

This is where I have to be honest and say no. The lake is much much shallower than advertised and we struggled to find anything deeper than 1 metre despite the info stating the depths ranged 1.5 - 2.5 metres. On top of this the fish are very much down on weight. This is probably due to the lack of bait going in due to COVID/lockdown but all of the fish I caught, with the exception of the last common, were very long and lean and looked down in weight in my opinion. If you fish here then please bear in mind the depths as some sonars/fish finders won’t work in this shallow water. *Angling Lines note* Thank you for your feedback, whilst water levels do fluctuate over the season, we agree that our depths on the website were too high and we have amended this slightly.

Would you recommend the services to a friend?

The services from Angling Lines was fantastic and I cannot fault them. They even called me mid week as they had heard that the lake was not fishing and wanted to reassure me that it was the change in conditions and not the lake. They advised me of the previous weeks captured and even gave some detail of the successful tactics having called the customers from the previous week to get some advice for us.

General Comments:

Great service, great facilities, local town for basic supplies, bailiffs were very helpful and even helped to book the vet for our dog to have his ringworm treatment prior to our return journey. The lake was not as expected and we were very unlucky with the weather but we can’t control this.

Details of your catches:

Peg 1 right - Les - 23lb 10oz, 22lb, 23lb, 32lb 1oz, 28lb, 25lb 5oz, 31lb 5oz, 21lb 8oz, 23lb 11oz, 21lb. Peg 1 left - Dave - 23lb 11oz. Peg 3 - Lee - 30lb 8oz, 26lb 6oz, 22lb 15oz, 22lb 4oz. Peg 4 right - Steve - 30lb 7oz, 22lb 10oz, 26lb. Peg 4 left - no fish caught Peg 5 right - Colin - 28lb, 27lb 2oz Peg 5 Left - Paul - 41lb 11oz, 35lb 10oz, 31lb 9oz, 21lb 9oz, 20lb 2oz.

Your best tactics/bait/rigs:

Snowman rigs to far end of the lake for peg 5 Wafter baits to dead sunken tree in peg 1. No fish came from the island, most fish caught at night.

Were the facilities what you expected?

As expected as was in lake description on Angling Lines website.

Were you happy with them?

When working it was fine. Boiler runs on bottle gas which run out during our stay. Toilet, shower and power sockets share the same battery so with 7 of us using the facilities it seemed these run down rather quick. A WhatsApp message to the bailiffs and they were soon swapped over for fully charged ones. Currently not running on solar as described on website. The gas fridge was installed on the Tuesday, we never used this as we took our own fridges.

Would you recommend the venue to a friend?

Not sure at this time if I would. I would make sure that they knew about the depths of the lake for the time of year they would maybe fishing.

Would you recommend the services to a friend?

Angling lines would get my recommendation 100%. It just shows what a great company that you run with the support for all the anglers through the COVID-19 issues around travel to France. This trip had been rearranged 3 times. On behalf of all the lads in my group we thank you AL. A friend also was away the same week on another one of your waters following my recommendation of your services following his dreadful experience with another holiday firm.

General Comments:

I would like to see an update on lake depths in the description for the swims. I was fishing in peg 5 and didn’t find any depth over 3ft for the whole swim. There was depths for the venue, we just didn’t realise that this was applicable to the majority of the lake. Speaking to the bailiffs they said this doesn’t make a difference. It was a shame we never landed any of the big girls, however wish all future anglers all the best on Renarde. We experienced very large bangs / explosions throughout the nights, every 6mins from 22:30hrs to 05:30hrs ( one night I sat there timing them all). Apparently it’s the local hunting / farming community keeping wild bore from entering the fields that surround the lake. This bangs were either shotguns or propane explosions (YouTube- Bird bangers how they work).