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