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

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