Arriving on Saturday afternoon on the Stansted flight, after a quick trip to the supermarket on the way home, were Michael, Cathy, Tom and Sam who were certainly no strangers to carp fishing in France. From talking to them it sounded like they had fished a large number of lakes around the Limoges area, either driving down through France or flying, from when their children were very young. For the last few years Michael and Cathy have come on their own but this time Tom and Sam managed to join them.
After a quick tour round the lake they were quickly set up with Sam on swim 1 in a bivvy, Tom on swim 2 in the hut and Michael taking the second hut on what Nigel likes to call the Nightingales swim. With both maple syrup and spicy fish boilies provided for them, as well as plenty of pellets and parti-blend they very quickly got themselves set up and their rods in the water. Michael was not intending on leaving his swim for the week they were here, leaving Cathy to cook for the week, although she did say that he does usually do the cooking. The boys took it in turns to go to the supermarket with their mum on the Monday and Wednesday of their week, to stock up on provisions.
As usual, we walked round to see them on Sunday morning and heard that both Sam and Tom had lost one each but they had both had one on the bank, Sam had caught a small cat weighing 21lb and Tom a 17lb common so at least two of them were off the mark. Whilst we were stood chatting to Tom his rod kicked off so we stayed to see the fish reach the net and Nigel was on hand to help. Tom played it well and got it so close to the bank that we could see it was a lovely common and then the line snapped and the fish was lost. No one likes to see that happen, but that is fishing for you.
Sunday afternoon brought a bit of drama as there had been a wildfire just 2km away and the farmers had been pumping water from Lac Lucie to help the pompiers. Someone came round to Kingfisher as well and spoke to Michael but the only word he understood was pêche and he thought they were coming to put some more fish in the lake (we wish!). But nothing was taken from this lake and it wasn’t long before the helicopters appeared and started taking water from deeper lakes around us. It was all a bit worrying though as the fire was so close. With only 0.5mm of rain all month and temperatures over 30°C for the last four weeks the ground is incredibly dry and there are wildfires being reported nearly every day somewhere in the country.
On Sunday evening Tom posted that he had had a 30lb mirror on Instagram and Sam a catfish 74lb 6oz – a new PB for him. Michael told us on Monday morning that he had also had a couple of baby catfish in the night that had lost the hook but that he had landed 2 carp in the mid twenties.
On our Tuesday morning visit Sam had had a 32lb common and Michael had landed 2 small catfish.
The weather started to change early on Wednesday morning and we had a good rain shower and storm at 5am with gusts of wind at over 30km/h. It didn’t last too long though and whilst Nigel took Cathy to the supermarket at 9am the heavens opened again and there was a massive hail storm. Luckily Sam had gone to the supermarket but the other two were fishing in it, although we guess that they took shelter in the huts. It did clear the air a little but temperatures still managed to reach 34°C by 5pm
Thursday afternoon looked like being a repeat of Wednesday’s weather as big black clouds rolled in and we could hear thunder all around us. About half an hour away they reported a lot of damage by hail stones the size of golf balls. We were certainly pleased that this missed us but it did fortunately cause the temperatures to drop by over 10°C to a more comfortable 25°C so we all slept better that night.
With Jo’s 86 year old mum and neighbour visiting, it has not been easy to keep track of when the fish came out but we had a great log of the 30 carp and catfish that did end up in the net and a few photos also.
What we do know is that Tom had a new PB catfish at 74lb 1oz and a new PB carp at 44lb 4oz and Sam had a new PB catfish at 74lb 6oz. Tom wrote on his Instagram video that there were also ‘lots of carp for dad and….. a PB for mum’s cooking!’
The final summary for these 3 fine anglers is captured in this lovely ChatGPT infogram below but consisted of zero babies, 2 at 10lb+, at 20lb+, 5 at 30lb+, 3 at 40lb+ and 9 catfish up to 74lb 6oz (3 over 70lb). What a great week with over 950lbs of fish on the bank. We hope that you will return again to have another go but until then bonne journée et à bientôt…
