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Christmas Stocking

When we took over Carp France we also carried on with the renting of a 5-acre stock pond, about 10 minutes drive from us. It made sense to us to carry on with this whilst we got to know the business and found our feet. After some consideration we decided earlier this year to end our tenancy as it was clear that it was a lot of extra work maintaining the lake and whilst it is wise to have somewhere to grow fish on, we were given another opportunity, without the distance and without the maintenance.

We had met with the owners and the DDT (the people who inspect lakes and give permission for the emptying) back in October and had arranged with them and our fish farmer to net the lake at the beginning of December. There were certain things we had to get done before the drain down and with a few friends we had a day at the lake, removing all of the brambles from the dam wall, digging out the pêcherie and making sure that the stream was able to take the water rather than it entering the lake.

Pêcherie before
Pêcherie after
Stream before
Stream being dug
Stream finished

Nigel had only managed to find time to fish it on a handful of occasions and not caught many carp so we were not sure what we were going to get from the netting so the excitement started building once we got back from the UK and started the drain down. This lake is about 15 foot deep at the dam wall end and as with our lakes we were not sure how quickly it would empty and so the week before the netting we opened the valve and went over 2-3 times a day to try to make sure that we had enough water in it for the fish but it was shallow enough for Jean-Noël to net it successfully.

Opening the valve
24 hours to go
Netting day

The morning of the netting arrived and after not much sleep we got to the lake as it was getting light and there was just a large puddle left, still a good 4 foot deep but we were glad we had not left the valve open fully overnight! Jean-Noël and a couple of friends arrived to give us a hand and the net was soon put round the puddle and all of the boxes and slings were ready to transport the fish. It was a bit of a trek back to the fish farmer’s truck as the ground was too wet to get anywhere closer. Plastic boxes are the best and safest way to transport the fish and we quickly got into a routine and got them into the oxygen water tanks onto the back of the truck as quickly as we could.

The carp came first, followed by several boxes of small roach and perch and then the catfish, which were being taken away by Simon who has a catfish lake not too far from us (www.facebook.com/whiskerslake).

Once we were sure that we had the majority of the fish we quickly drove them back to their new home at Kingfisher and started to get them out of the tanks. We had decided we were just going to weigh and photograph the biggest fish as it would be quite time consuming to do every fish but we did manage to get a couple of extra photos of Jean-Noël whilst he was unloading them.

In total about 30 carp over 10lb were put in the lake, 2 at 40lb+, 8 at 30lb+ as well as approximately 15 at 20lb+ and 5 at 10lb+. Here are a few of those we weighed.

45lb
38lb
35lb

In addition to the 30 carp we have added to our stock in Kingfisher we also had about 10 babies which we have transferred into our new stock pond. This is going to be a gorgeous mirror once it has been to nursery school.

Many thanks to Paul, Nicki, Jean-Noël and Seb for all their help getting the stock pond ready and helping us to net it and to the Tombelaine family for allowing us to use it and for being so kind and understanding.

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