Bon Noel

Good evening fellow bloggids.

First and foremost we would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. Myself and Monsieur Jones spent most of the afternoon and evening drinking, eating, more drinking, more eating, and worrying about all the people back in Blighty having to fight their way through the much reported snow drifts and suchlike just to get to a bit of turkey. There were no such obstacles here as the cold snap that was documented in the last post has now subsided with xmas day itself being a day of lovely sunshine with temperatures around 15 c. Its been a similar story since so its all quite comfortable in that respect at the moment.

This is the biggest piece of turkey we could fit in a Coleman oven so in that respect its a fcuk-in big bird.

Not quite on xmas day but at 3 am on the 26th, the largest carp of the session so far picked up the wrong bait and had a visit to the bank.

At 51lb 4oz its a big fish.

I lost a fish the day after from the same spot - it chaffed the hooklink on a snag and Paul had this 17lb fish on the first night in his new swim in the bay so there are a few fish around the general area. We've both done well to get some action as we're not aware of much else coming out of the lake at the moment.

Unfortunately I can't fish at the moment because a reoccurring problem that is known in medical circles as Dodgyious Bastardious Backious and its likely that your average 93 year old could get out of bed and get their shoes on quicker than I could at the moment although I'm hoping to fish the days from tomorrow if things keep improving. Very frustrating when kippers are about I tell thee.

The lake is full to the brim with anglers for the xmas period and its musical swim time. I used to hate that game as a kid and its not much better watching it at Cassien. Two chaps fishing opposite to where we are had moved out this morning at 10 am and by 10-15 am there were three other anglers moved in, its crazy really but with probably one hundred carpers here it'll be the same for the next week or so but should then return to some sort of normality.

Levels

The levels at this place are up and down like a fiddler's elbow. After the lake rising quickly because of two days of heavy rain before xmas, forcing Paul into moving swims, the lake has now dropped 3 feet in a very short space of time although there is more rain forecast later this week so hopefully it won't be going down much further. Its hard to tell what will happen next here because if the turbines for the hydro electric dam are put into use then the water can go down a few feet in one night.

See you soon

Its Gone Cold.

Good evening fellow bloggites.

As you can see, I've got the snood on, and as the reason being isn't that I'm trying to hide from the wild boar that are in my swim every night, it would be a fair statement to say its gone cold, both in the climatic sense of the word and metaphorically speaking. Most nights are into minus figures down to -6, the daytime temperature has dropped 3 or 4 degrees, as has the water temperature and the fish are doing their level best to make us out to be fools. This may be the case of course, because our seemingly well thought out plan of sitting it out for a big 'un in what is historically a known big fish area is not paying any dividends as yet, although one big fish will obviously put a different complexion on matters and I suppose the eleven nights that we've spent in the area isn't a vast amount of time but things are very quiet. Marcus Lamprecht has been down in the next swim along for a few nights and not had any joy so he's gone to fish the west arm and even Steve Briggs is struggling up at the other end of the south arm, and between them they've got forty or more years experience of fishing here so it shows how tricky it is at the moment. We shall spend another few days here though before making a decision on things because the busy period will be on us soon and if we are moving then it will be before Christmas.

As far as captures around the lake go there are a few small fish coming out of the north and west arms although we haven't heard of anything decent for a while, but as always this doesn't mean that there hasn't been, but its a fair assumption. All in all, apart from the Poison Dwarf snapping a rod, my boat getting a puncture and the half broken oarlock finally breaking its been

an uneventful week.

Levels

The great lake has continued to reclaim its banks and at the moment is only a few feet off being at full capacity, and although the forecast rains never materialised right above us we could see them to the north and these have added to the amount of water coming in here this last few days.

See you soon

Heading South...

Good evening fellow bloggingtons

After spending another few days on what became an island, and no more fish, we've headed a little further south and I'm now fishing La Banane and Paul is on La Pointe au Steph. The swim sketch gives you an idea of whats in front of us, not as deep and all in all its a lot less snaggy than the last area.

Vinnie says carping is boring..

The weather has been settled and sunny, around 15 c most days this week and with the odd bit of decent wind, until last night when we had blizzards to the north and a storm to the west but not much of interest happened right here, although there is some rain forecast in the next few days and we've had a few showers today. The levels on the lake are still rising at a rate of around four inches a day and although we haven't had a period where the level comes up quickly for almost two weeks, we feel that we should now be better placed to take advantage when this sort of situation comes again. It also seems like a good area to stay for a while which may be needed with the predictions of the busy Christmas period when there will be mayhem in some parts of the lake I suppose - our new found German friend Floris caught a 52lb common in the North arm yesterday then four Italian chaps kindly asked him to move on and fish elsewhere. Floris has worked his socks off since arriving ten days ago, fishing five different swims all over the lake and he's had six fish with the 50 common being the biggest and obviously a very big fish, and maybe the Italians will catch a 60, but its a sorry state of affairs and by all accounts, not irregular down at Cassien.

From the reports we've heard the fish that are being caught in the very busy north arm are mainly small with the exception of the 50 common, and the west arm has produced a high 40 and a few small fish. In the south arm the biggest fish we know of this week was caught by Dave the Englishman at 37lb and its got busier as there has been a few anglers moved into the arm in the last few days so in total there are now probably ten or twelve here.

Well thats the state of play at the moment, quiet on the carp front although hopefully that will change with our new surroundings and for now, the expectation is enough.

See you soon

Opened th'account

Good evening fellow blooggenfiles.

Whilst nursing a heavy head brought on by Floris the German and his bottle of Scotch, I've at last opened my account with this pretty but slightly lightweight common. Still a Cassien carp but after what is now two weeks fishing, a 20lb common doesn't elevate the session into the successful category but its nice to get off the mark.

The weather since the last post has been a mixture of frosty nights, sunny days, and some that have been constant rain which has helped out the water levels and the lake has risen another four feet in the last five days so that can only be a good situation. The lake has not been prolific but there have been a few small fish plus a 37lb mirror out of the north arm and its been similar in the west arm but a 53lb fish has been landed a couple of days ago. There are four anglers at the end of the south arm and they've had a few fish out with the biggest being a 37lb common out of the shallows yesterday afternoon. All in all, the fish are slowly getting on the feed but sadly they aren't in front of us in any great numbers so at the moment we've been spending a bit of time rowing around various parts of the south arm with the echo sounder so that we can make a better judgement on where to move to in a few days if things don't pick up here.

Seen as things are a little slow on the carp side of things, if there is any of you that fancy a spot of French public water fishing and want to know a bit of the language, then over the session we'll guide you through a selection of fishing related and other useful Frenchy bits and bobs. I've done my best to give you a pronunciation on the right of each word - just imagine them with a French accent and you won't be far off.

Carpers French Lesson 1 - Tackle

rod - canne/canne a peche - can

reel - moulinet - moolinay

line - fille/ligne - fee/leen

bobbin/hanger - bobine - bobeen

rig - montage/badling

lead - plomb - plom

hook - hamecon - hamson

alarm - detecteur

pod - rodpod

net - puisette - pweezet

scales - balance - balonse

unhooking mat - tapis de reception - tapee de raysepshon

bivvy - biwwy - bewee

bedchair - bedchair

chair - chaise - shez

sleeping bag - duvet/sac

throwing stick - stick

boat - bateaux - bat-oh

echo sounder - sonder

battery - battery

Thats lesson one done and dusted with twenty items of tackle - simples, as that annoying little bas**rd meerkat says.

See you soon

Jones is warming up!

Good evening fellow bloggernoids.

The levels are rising. The mere threat of snake hips Jones doing a rain dance has brought some much needed precipitation for the last couple of days, the result is that the lake has risen by about 2 feet and it will probably do another 6 inches tonight although the rain has stopped this afternoon leaving clear skies behind.

On Friday morning just before the rain started, Mr Jones opened his account with a nice looking 25-12 mirror and on Saturday night he pulled out something a lot more substantial in the shape of this much welcomed 43-8 mirror.

Its been quiet since then with no fish coming out on Sunday or today so we'll have to wait and see if the couple of days rain we've had makes a difference.

The south arm is even less populated than a few days ago now, with only us and two other carpers in the whole of the arm which makes it difficult to judge whats happening as far as captures go, although I do know the two Germans that are fishing 500yds down the bank from us haven't caught for a while so all in all things still seem fairly slow. Personally, I think we need the levels to come up another few feet in a short space of time to get the carp a little more excited and get them on the feed but unfortunately, the weather report is fairly settled for the next few days and the local radio station has been spot on with the predictions so far.

See you soon

All is quiet

Good evening fellow bloggertrons

Sorry about the small pics on the last post, I forgot to change the settings so I've uploaded the swim sketch again so you can actually see it.

All is quiet on the carp front, unfortunately predictable but Rome wasn't built in a day, as they say. The quiet south arm is now less quiet, there's probably 8 or 10 anglers here now but on the positive side, there has been three fish caught by some German anglers, only small stuff but fish at least. One or two that have moved down to the south arm this last couple of days have spent a week in the north arm where they've had nothing so it seems at the moment that there isn't a lot of fish on the feed.

The levels in the lake are coming up slowly, about an inch per day for now but when we do get some rain closer by, hopefully that amount should go up considerably. The weather at the moment is very settled, its short sleeve stuff during the days, today was 19 c and sunny, as have been most days since we set up so if things don't change in the next few days I'll be getting snake hips Jones to do a rain dance around the swim - not the prettiest sight in the world but if rain is required I'll have a go at anything.

Rig Things

For now there's not much out of the ordinary with our end tackle but I'll run you through whats what. The Poison Dwarf is using 15lb mainline with 3ft of leadcore, a 12" ish coated hooklink, 4 or 5oz lead and a size 4 Drennan continental hook - we both use the same hooks, no better hook in our opinion.

I'm using pretty much the same but I've got a few more snags in front of me in the shape of tree stumps, so after loosing a few bits of end tackle I'm floating my lines out with the aid of a bit of cork with some tubing through it - keeps the line away from the nasty's down there. End tackle lying on the bottom of lakes anywhere is never a good thing and if it can be avoided, it should be, and seen as I'm a tight Northerner it helps with the budget also.

See you soon

Finally fishing

Good evening fellow bloggists.

First things first, this is Paul's dog, Mr Vinnie.

All things considered, Vinnie is really the boss, not too keen on having his picture taken but, this dog will not crap within 50yd of a bivvy, and does not bark at carp. Nuff said.

After a 15 hr drive from Rennes in NW France, we arrived at St Cassien on Wednesday night at 7 pm. It was dark so we put up our bivvies in a parking area near the lake, had some food and got some much needed rest. I'll admit it wasn't the best nights sleep I've ever had, imagine sleeping 30yd from the M25 and you'll be somewhere near.

Thursday morning was soon upon us and it was time to have a good look around the lake. First port of call was American Beach in the west arm. We spoke with a French angler and all was quiet in that area of the arm so we headed around the corner to Aviron to see if anything was happening there. The fellas fishing Aviron had been fisheless for a week but they'd had 18 fish the previous two weeks up to high 40's. It was a similar story in the rest of the west, and the north arm had been slow for a while too. From what we could find out, 8 fish had been out in the last ten days or so.

With the west and north arms quite busy and slow on the carp front we decided to get in the south arm, where there was only three anglers. Another nights camping followed, this time in a far quieter spot just behind American Beach. By Thursday lunchtime we were finally getting the boats out and loading up ready for the journey to the swim.

We've commandeered a point between L'ile and Le Pylone, approximately half way down the south arm on the west bank, its probably a waiting game and we're not expecting much action for a few weeks until we get some rain, but we have the time and we've decided to do stay at least three weeks in the swim. Hopefully the levels will rise - at the moment the lake is 17ft down but two weeks ago it was 22ft down so its getting better in that respect and if the fish do get down here in the near future we should have a few.

We didn't fish on Friday night because again, it was dark by the time we'd got all the gear to the swim and set up the bivvies and as you've probably gathered by now, we're not into rushing things so we had some food and made a proper start on Saturday morning. As expected, there's nothing to report from our first nights fishing but its great to be here and finally fishing Lac de St Cassien.

So you get a general idea of what we've got in front of us, here's a sketch of the swim.

See you soon

Not surprisingly...

Welcome to the first post of our blog.

As things often turn out, we're running slightly behind schedule by about a week. We were hoping to be at Cassien for Thursday this week but after rolling 100kg of bait, we are still waiting for some of the dry ingredients for the base mix to roll the other 100kg, which has put the brakes on proceedings for the last four days but hopefully we'll be able to start rolling again tomorrow.

Regarding bait, we're taking three flavours, around 65kg of each all in 22mm - peach melba + black pepper oil, chicken + black pepper oil and the last one is just black pepper oil. Its a good quality fishmeal bait with robin red and a few crunchy goodies in there also.

We are using a preservative in our bait for this winter, not something that we do usually but all things considered, it was a choice of either air drying the baits harder than we would of liked or using the preservative. We opted for the preserved bait to keep it softer and therefore easier to digest in the colder temperatures.

The flavours and preservative are supplied from Bevo's Bait and although we don't pretend to be bait experts when it comes to the finer details of the science, we know that if John says its a high quality presevative, it is. I've used bait with the same preservative in England for a few months a caught some nice carp out of a very low stock water so we have every confidence in it.

For the record, the bait has cost roughly 2.50 euros per kg, not too bad at all for a high quality bait.

Our aim now is to arrive at Cassien for next Wednesday and although we have lost some time, when its a three month session its not the end of the world.

Right chaps and chapesses, thats the end of the first, and slightly uninteresting post but hopefully the fun will start next week.

See you soon

Winter at St Cassien

Jones and Lucas are spending this winter at one of the greatest carp lakes there has been - Lac de St Cassien. Between us we've amassed over twenty years of non commercial carping experience in France alone, this includes sessions that have lasted six months and other countries include Holland, Belgium and of course England. Through this blog we'll be sharing the ins, the outs, and the general ups and downs of long session fishing.

Our session starts in November lasting three to four months at Cassien, and as with the rest of our fishing, this will be done without the help of sponsorship from tackle manufacturers and bait companies.

First post will be up early November.