Happy new year to all our readers – we hope that 2026 brings you health and happiness and of course many great fishing trips. If you are visiting us this year we will look forward to welcoming you and hopefully giving you a week of relaxation and some great fish on the bank. If you have not yet booked a trip for this year and are tempted then please get in touch – we still have some school holiday weeks available.
The first week of the year was very cold, with temperatures as low as -9°C at night time and the lakes were both frozen within a couple of days. But it is January and we expect to have similar winters to the UK, although generally a little warmer. Once the temperatures rose the rain came and we have only had a few dry days since then. There are signs that spring is on the way though with the daffodils nearly in flower, the birds singing in the morning and the cranes starting to fly north again. Warm, dry days will be very welcome so we can finish tackling our winter jobs.
We always have a list of projects that we create over the season, things that we have got to do, things that we want to do and things that other people have suggested we do. At the beginning of January we sat down and planned what jobs we still wanted to get done, a breakdown of cost and a timeline for doing them. As some of you will know, all the money we have spare at the end of the season goes into improvements we want to make. You all know what happens when you plan though……
Within a week this plan went to pot as we discovered that the overflow on Kingfisher was leaking. We contacted our builder, Cesar Constructions, who came over and had a look, and thought that a good temporary measure would be to put some clay in front of it and then wait until the season was over to rebuild it. Unfortunately that did not work though and we all decided we should do it now before the problem became much worse and we lost all the water in the lake.
The old concrete was dug out to discover very fine gravel underneath which had been eroded by the crayfish who were all there hibernating. Added to this we had had to cut some of the trees down near it for the authorities and the roots had shriveled causing more holes for water to get through. Stuart and his son, Zak then spent a good ten days laying a new, narrower concrete overflow, this time with some good stones underneath which the crayfish will not be able to move. They have put some larger rocks going down to the stream, instead of concrete to make a nicer environment and all appeared good for a few days until Nigel noticed that there was still a leak. This work is still currently in progress, waiting for the rain to stop so there is still a lot of mud along Kingfisher dam wall.
While the work was being done on Kingfisher on the dam wall, Nigel finished doing all of the pruning and chipping on the main bank on the lake, using the chippings along the path as previously.
On days when it was just too wet to get outside jobs done we replaced the floor in the main living area in Lac Lucie chalet. A job that had been on our list since we took over the fishery. It now looks clean and smart and hopefully will be hard wearing enough for our anglers.
Another job on our list for this year was to level off swims 2 and 3 on the Kingfisher main bank. By the end of January we had had them levelled and we just need to tidy them up a bit now and get some gravel on them – more to follow next month.
We have started working a little on our garden, with some raised beds being put in place for vegetables which will hopefully be more successful this year.
The first of our two new bait boats have arrived, the new Angling Technics Ultracat S with Sonar GPS. We have carried out a brief maiden voyage to check that it was working correctly and are impressed with the speed and functionality of it. It moves faster, is more reliable and you can save up to 25 baiting spots and a home point. As with our previous bait boats these will be available to rent from us during your stay here and we will produce an abbreviated instruction sheet for them. Read more about it here. https://anglingtechnics.myshopify.com/products/ultracat-compact-bait-boat
For those of you who have stayed with us previously, you will know that France is great at recycling and they have just stepped it up even further. We are in the process of being issued our own individual wheelie bins, rather than communal ones, and we will be fined if we do not sort our rubbish properly. We will therefore be putting more detailed information in each of the chalets so that our guests can support us with this.
It has not been all work this month. We have had some lovely evenings out with our neighbours and friends and are enjoying watching a New Life in the Sun, as some of our friends will be on it in February, showing their chambre d’hôtes (B&B) nearby in Chalus. Whilst watching it we came across a new place to visit, about 25 minutes away near the public lake at St Estephe, called The Crazy Frog. A lovely English couple now run it and their Sunday lunches are just like back in the UK with a friendly atmosphere and great hospitality. As you may know, a lot of the bars and restaurants close over the winter as the population dwindles out of season so it is great to have somewhere else to go.
That is it for this month but don’t worry we are not resting in February with a few jobs still to finish and tick off our list. We are also working through a few ‘you said, we did’ suggestions from guests, showing that we listen and want to make your stay with us as comfortable as possible. Until next month bonne journée et à bientôt….