Fish Location

As the lake is unpressured the fish move freely and get caught near the numerous overhanging trees and out in open water. As always, the important thing is finding a feature in your chosen area. This may be in the form of an undulation, weed bed, silt pocket or marginal snag or overhang, the fish normally get caught on one of these as opposed to casting into an open flat area.

Marking your spots

You can use a marker rod to find and mark your features or an H block marker from a rowing boat using an echo sounder.

Bait Application

For a standard week at the lake, I would recommend the following bait:

• 5kg boilies, bring a bait you have confidence in, of good quality. The new bait for 2008, MARNE VALLEY MATRIX is set to be a winner and a valuable key to success
• 5kg pellets
• 5kg particle

Vary the quantity of bait applied per rod. If you are going to introduce a large bed of bait then be prepared to sit on it for at least 2 days before thinking of moving it. It’s always worth dribbling in a few kgs of bait on a few other spots that you are not fishing. This will give the fish confidence to move into the area and feed. Then if you want to move a rod you will be a step ahead and could drop onto feeding fish, think ahead!!

Tackle

The following list highlights some of the main elements required:

• MARKER ROD – braid can be used when feature finding and marking spots but ensure it is min. 20lb BS.
• MAIN LINE – min 15lb test, make sure its tried and tested and you have respooled with new line, nothing worse than loosing a potential monster due to defective line.
• ALARMS – bring spare batteries and buy a sounder box if you are a heavy sleeper.
• SCALES – 120LB Specimen Hunter Ruben Heatons, they will not let you down like some of the well known brands of digital scales.
• MAT – make sure it’s BIG! And well padded! (we sell these if needed)
• WEIGH SLING – once again big with rigid supports and no plastic fixtures, they break! It needs to be strong!

Terminal Tackle

Keep it as normal; do not be tempted to change things because you are in France. The only things that you may need to look at are hooklink strength, min 15lbs, I would go for at least 20lbs. Hook sizes should not vary from your English fishing and should be in proportion to the bait size, they should be of a strong gauge.