Fast forward to April 2017 and the puzzle pieces were fitting together and something in my mind clicked....let's do this French fishing. As many of you know there are hundreds and thousands of lakes to fish. Apart from the familiar "commercial" trips and advertised lakes that are fished on the many free dvds, I have no idea where to start with finding lakes in France. To get the Ice broken I had the idea of Dream Lakes. As a package deal it's ideal for the 1st time trip. A phone call to my good friend Fenlon and the planning started. However, 24hours later and a spanner thrown in the works. A mention of the trip between Fenlon and his boss and a bad experience had put a downer with Fenlon. Then the trip to a lake with his boss and 5 others was put on the table. We had the opportunity to a lake known as Island Lakes, 70 miles south of Paris. With very little information about the lake and it's residents and I agreed to put my name down for a space alongside Fenlon. This was it....the dream was a reality and my name was down for a fishing holiday. 1st hurdle passed, let the planning begin.
There was many, many conversations between myself and Fennlon over the next 14 months before the trip. Everything from what bait we should use to tactics and even food for us to take. The planning of a fishing session is something I take a lot of pride in and quite enjoy. Tying rigs, looking at the weather, getting to the local tackle shop I enjoy all of that. That is usually a week or 2 before I head out. But this was 14 months of looking at catch reports, saving for bait, writing many shopping lists of food I would need to survive on. It went so fast that before we realised there was 5 weeks to go.
Bait ordered and food was being bought and frozen for me to feed on. We both decided that we would buy the same bait and if we ended up in a double swim we would help each other and basically create 1 big feeding spot. So a trip to Blakes bait near Benson and 50kg of nutmix maple boilies was on order. This was then topped up by 10kg of boilie ends. These 5kg bags of mixed sizes and flavours of boilie are a great addition as the carp get distracted by the same colour and size of boilie....at least they do in my mind.
Rig wise I don't use the newest thing going and have an array of multiple choice of rigs. I use 3 rigs depending on the situation. The multi rig, Ronnie rig and my go to (and most productive rig) the snowman. As watercraft has made quite an impact on my fishing over the last few years I wanted to tie a few rigs so I could spend as much time watching the water when we were in France. So with that in mind I spent 2 nights and a saturday tying rigs. 30 snowman rigs tied all with a long hair and a boom section of 7 inches. 15 multi rigs were next tied and then 25 Ronnie rigs were created but leaving the boom section longer than normal. I had been using the Ronnie rig for 18months now and found the boom length works at shorter or longer lengths depending on the lake bed I was fishing over.
The night of May 30th was very long and the catching up on sleep was little. I had finished work at 5.30pm and travelled home. That night was spent packing my clothing bag. Thursday 31st May and I was like a kid on on Christmas Eve. Fenlon was knocking on my door and we were in the van Blake's bound. The collection of 60kg boilies was made. We were chatting to the staff and Tim knew of Island Lakes. He prewarned us that this lake is hard. And as a 1st trip to France he was doubtful of our chances. This didn't put a downer on the situation because I stated that as long as I learned new tricks I would be happy. A quick trip to Asda and the last of the food was bought. The short trip home and we we packing the van. We both agreed that we would get an early night as Fenlon would be picking me up at 5.30am. Preparation done....now time for france.
Till next time...
Carper Dee
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