Simon Irons

Field Tester

0

Leaving a rainy UK on Friday the 29^th of June 2013 I set off for southern France to fish the wonderful lake at Le Bel Etang de Puyrigaud in the Limoges area. The rain seemed to follow me all the way down the French motorways, and it actually stayed with me until the Monday of the trip. Arriving saw the lake looking picturesque and looked just primed for some serious carp action. I decided to fish the point swim as I knew this would give me a greater ambush coverage area of the lake, to cover all the places that looked really “carpy”.

Saturday passed without any action after setting up around 4pm, I decided to put 2 rods under some trees on my left, which also meant baiting up would be a short stroll round the bank. Baiting up consisted of around 2 kg of 10mm M1 boilies about 2 kg of mixed pellets including M1 6mm pellets, 2mm halibut pellets, 6mm halibut pellets and some 2mm lobworm pellets. This would be topped up every time I got a run or in the evening before getting in the bivvy.

Sunday I managed to get a couple of small carp, the first was only a 2lb common; I followed this up with a mirror of 26lb and a common of 19lb.

Monday the weather changed and it was from one extreme to the other, the temps went up to 30 degrees and the fish decided that spawning would be a great idea. Despite the spawning 11 carp were banked, 4 of which were 30lb plus fish.

My first took 30 yards of line without any hassle at all, making the Fox Stratos fs1200e reels scream. The fight felt like nothing I had ever hooked before, either this fish was massive or there was something wrong, the latter was to be the case, after 25mins a stunning 38lb mirror came to the surface, only the wrong way up. It had foul hooked its self in the pectoral fin muscle. With pictures done and the beast duly released the rod was recast with M1 16mm boilie on the hair tipped off with a pineapple pop up to snowman the rig. 5 mins after going back out I had hooked into another large fish. The fight was less impressive but once on the bank the carp still pulled the scales round to 33lb.

The fish kept coming all day with my biggest of the trip included at 39lb 14oz a cracking mirror, but not much of a fighter. Other fish Monday weighed 4lb, 13lb, 5lb tench, 21lb, 24lb, 21lb, 14lb and yet another 30lb carp at 32lb.

Tuesday went wet, weather wise, with a nasty drizzle that just saturated everything. The right hand rod I had kept off the trees and used it as a roving rod, I had seen some “fizzers” about 10 yards out, within minutes of casting the Fox Horizon SFD 3lb test curve rod was bent into the first thirty of the day, another real fight that lasted the best part of 20mins I slipped the net under a mirror of 38lb14oz, I was very happy with the result.

Around 9am the same rod went off again a lovely 36lb mirror was on the bank.

It didn’t stop there, by the end of the day 6 fish over 30lb , along with 2 twenties the thirties weighed 38lb,36lb,33lb,34lb,36lb,and a scrapper 30lb mirror.

I had changed my rig on Monday night after noticing some of the hook holds were not in the bottom lip, the change I made was to prove very effective. Tying up a normal knotless knot rig I decided to use what would normally be the hair part of the rig to be a suspension loop for a size 20 swivel to which I would bait floss the hook baits. The rig was a basic inline set up, Korda Safezone leaders and an inline lead of 2.5oz, the hook length was 20lb N-Trap Soft, with no area stripped back.

The fish hook holds went from being erratic earlier in the session, to being nailed every time, the carp seemed unable to deal with the rig and every run was converted into a fish on the bank. I had lost 3 fish earlier in the week.

Wednesday and Thursday were just as busy with 13 fish being banked over the 2 days, 3 more were over 30lb with the biggest being 37lb and another 7 were over 20lb.

The M1 boilies kept bringing the runs despite the weather and despite the spawning, I had used a pva bag filled with M1 pellet and halibut pellets with a meaty groundbait and the M1 groundbait liquid just for good measure. This all seemed to keep the fish interested and feeding and all the ingredients complimented each other perfectly. My M1 baits are glugged in the M1 bait dip which is the perfect addition to the boilies and gives me an edge I feel over other anglers.

Friday is a short session day finishing at around 4pm as I always go to a local restaurant in the village to have an end of trip meal but even though the day was short 4 more carp were to show up the biggest being “Parrot” at 22lb 14oz.

The lake is set in deep woodland and is truly beautiful, it is a long drive once off the train at Calais but the 7 hours are more than worth the drive, so much so I have a second week booked in August with my wife Shaz, she also loves SBS baits but is a fan of the squid and octopus boilies. So expect that report update soon.

TOTAL 13 x 30lb+... 14 x 20lb+...10 x 10lb+ and 2 single figure carp and tench.

By: Simon Irons