Lenny and Michelle chose Lac Lucie for their first French carp fishing holiday and what a week they had, enjoying the peace and quiet (apart from the rutting deer) and making the most of the sunny days. Michelle is certainly not as avid an angler as Lenny who spends much of his time ‘down’t river’ fishing for anything but enjoying pike fishing in the winter months.
As they had flown in from Leeds/Bradford airport on the Friday they spent Saturday morning looking around Limoges before Jo collected them and took them to the supermarket for a few essentials (beer and wine mainly). The excitement on the way back to the lake was palpable and it was obvious that Lenny just wanted to get fishing. Leaving Michelle to unpack all the suitcases in the chalet he went down to the lake to set his rods and tackle up so that he was ready to get fishing after tea.
Michelle went down to join Lenny after they had had their tea but had decided that she wasn’t going to fish all night, partly because the forecast was for some cold nights at the beginning of their week and partly because the chalet was warmer and comfier and she could watch Strictly in peace. She had agreed, however, that Lenny could call her whenever he had a fish so that she could rush down and take photos for him.
The first fish arrived on the bank before 10pm on that first Saturday night, a nice long, dark common weighing 20lb 13oz.
And so it continued, well for Lenny it did, but maybe that was because he was putting the hours in and coming up with new strategies all the time to try and out wit them. Over the next few days he had a nice selection of teens and 20lbs out including these few.
Every fish that Lenny caught was bought into the bank nice and slowly, ‘I’ll not bully them in, Michelle’ was one of the things we heard often when we down by the lake. They were played and allowed to run when they wanted and consequently Lenny lost a few over the week as they got into the mud and shook the hook out. So every catch was a nicely hooked fish and every fish was weary by the time it got onto the bank.
Lenny had refused to tell us what his PB was at the beginning of the week, saying he was saving it til the end but by Tuesday he had smashed it with this 40lb 4oz mirror.
Then the panic set in, was he weighing the fish properly? He had not been convinced about some of the weights of the fish, so Nigel had lent him his old fashioned analogue scales. As they had rented two tackle packs from us they also had two sets of digital scales and Lenny was not sure that he was using the same set of scales each time he caught one. One evening Lenny bought all sets up to the house so that Nigel could have a look at them. It appeared that one set of the digital scales were already tared and one set were not. Now Lenny was worrying about what scales he had used for what fish and it was evident that he was a stickler for accuracy.
By Wednesday lunchtime Lenny had had 7 carp out and Michelle had none. She had dutifully got up at all hours of the night to take photos, or even take Lenny down a piece of toast or cup of tea. And on Wednesday afternoon he had had two more mirrors, including one of the smallest, scaliest in the lake.
Then at last it was Michelle’s turn, a lovely 35lb 12oz common just before tea on Wednesday. Too heavy for her to lift but she was happy that she had smashed her previous PB by over 25lb. No messing about with the little ones for her. Nigel took Lenny to Mamie’s bar for a celebratory drink whilst Michelle had half an hour in the hot tub with her book.
It took until Thursday for Lenny to remember that he wasn’t fishing on the river. Every night after tea he would get up and say he was off down’t river and it didn’t matter how many times we told him it was a lake he was always going off down’t river. But he took the jesting in good humour, thank goodness!
Thursday saw four more fish out for Lenny, with three in the 30s and Michelle had another 30lber too.
On Friday they managed another two each, with a new PB mirror for Michelle and were starting to think about packing things away.
Lenny was thinking he would be going home with a new PB of 40lb 4oz and with just the one 40lber but the either side of sun rise on Saturday morning he had his final two fish out, the last one being another PB, a 48lb common.
So Lenny certainly had the most fish, 19 in total with Michelle catching the 4 but she was just as happy and both had smashed their PBs easily. The original deal was whoever caught the biggest fish the other one of them had to jump in the dip pool but with night time temperatures being below 10 degrees most nights the water had cooled considerably so Michelle decided to leave it for another time.
The final summary is zero babies, 3 at 10lb+, 10 at 20lb+, 7 at 30lb+ and 3 at 40lb+. With the weights being as accurate as they possibly can! What a great week for this lovely couple and we hope to see them again some day. Until next time, à bientôt….