subject: My Winter Carp Fishing Trip [print this page] Carp Fishing In France Carp Fishing In France
Lakes in Europe could be categorized to public venues by way of to privately owned lakes, as a way to assist the average carp angler opt for the correct sort of venue I will try to explain and give positive aspects and disadvantages to every. The categories will grow to be clear as you read on.
Private Venues
These are lakes which have been purchased or leased and ran as fisheries on a commercial basis. They're on secured private grounds generally with accommodation & usualy the first choice of the holiday angler. They tend to be hassle free and a joy to fish. Carp stock and size vary from heavily stocked fairly easy venues to out and out big fish lakes. The advantages and disadvantages are not the case for every private venue but only my findings on the majority of them. They is often sub categorized as follows:
English owned/leased carp fishing lakes
There are many more English owned/leased venues hitting the market every year, some better than others, but to read the adverts some give the angler the wrong impression, the fish will not jump up your line, there are many successes and as many failures. I have not fished all but have been in contact with anglers who rave about some and slag others off. Some of the venues which have a waiting list are usually top quality, they have a waiting list due to the amount of return customers, anglers that were happy with there first trip. Most English owned/leased venues are within a 4 hours of a port, keeping the driving distance to a minimum for the travelling angler. In my view the most important factor of English owned lakes is that the owner is likely to be a carp angler and understands the needs of the visiting carpist. Prices on this type of venue are normally over ?200 per person per week, the proprietor is not trying to rip anyone off, they're simply paying for the lake, the stock, its maintenance and advertising costs, to maintain a quality venue that costs quality money.
French owned carp venues
Again these are privately owned lakes but tend to be open shop, by this I mean anyone can turn up and fish. There are literally hundreds of these with many of them catering well for the travelling angler. Many of the more experienced travelling carp angler fish these types of lakes, I know of several that have a good stock of 30 - 60 lb carp, but in the same breath I know of many that are out and out runs waters but you will be lucky to land anything over 30 lbs. The main advantage with this variety of venue is the price, they rarely exceed 140 euros (?100) per person per week! Rules is often virtually none existent, the only worry these lake owners have is the constant threat of fish thieves, I know one or two now carry out random checks on vehicles leaving the grounds. Most French lake owners tend to secure there gates at a certain time in the evening and re-open early morning, leaving a contact number for the angler to ring in case of emergencies by means of the silent hours. Here are a few good quality private French lakes that I have first hand experience of: Domaine des Illes, Pescalis, Beaumont de Lomagne, Etang de Pesnel, Lac de Poiteviniere, Champ de Ourscamp and Etang Rouge.
Carp fishing Agencies
Agencies for carp fishing do exactly the same as any other holiday industry, except the agencies in this case are those that
Public waters - AAPMA
Carte de Peche- Photos, Id,
Public waters with controlling bodys This sort of venue is becoming more common in France nowadays, they're venues that are public but have a controlling club or body that has the rights to fish, when taking the appropriate to fish, they also take up the rights to maintain the fish stocks and surrounding land. It may not be an angling club that is the main controlling body, for example on lac du der a Carte de peche is required and an additional licence, lac du der is primarily ran by the Nautic club. Another example is Etang Chantilly, the extra cost to fish this lake is approximately 110 euros (?80)
French carp fishing venues - On the Internet
The Internet provides a wealth of information to the carp angler, including many websites on French carp fishing and venues. This month I'll hopefully raise a few eyebrows by making you aware of the amount of venues available on the information superhighway. The web pages and sites listed happen to be added to my explorer favourites for future sessions, most have commonalities in that they contain big carp and are well stocked. In order to write this article many hours of research has gone into its compilation, over 10 years of surfing to be more precise! It looks like a list of plain old website addresses and quite a boring article? However! Once you follow the links in your Internet explorer you will realise the wealth of information being presented! Probably the most frequently asked question is which are the best lakes? This is a very difficult question to answer due to one person's rubbish being another mans treasure, in other words, it all depends on what you are looking for. I've made this statement in the past and am saying it again to hammer home its relevance. Most of the lakes within the websites below will accept direct reservations less for the public waters, where no prior reservation is required, being public they may be open to all i.e. turn up and fish once you have bought the carte de peche.
Carp fishing lakes continued
In this piece there are lake's/links to suit all abilities from the beginner to the big lake pioneer. I have refrained from giving website addresses of UK owned venue's as they should be within the commercial fishery focus section. My articles are non commercial orientated i.e. no venue owner has asked me to write about their lake nor would I if they did, if I make reference to commercial fisheries it is by my own doing, not of outside influence! Therefore I am at liberty, within reason to tell you how it is and how I rate them. A person's perception of a lake is usually different to what they see on arrival. In the past I fished a well-known private venue that held a lot of big carp. However the place was crawling with rats, as soon as the sun went down, they appeared. It was so bad that I would resort to taking traps with me. Even those were sprung within a few hours of darkness. One night I recall waking up to find myself eye to eye with a beast of a marsupial, it didn't hang round for long as I attempted to end its life with the aid of a stainless bank stick. Unfortunately, the battle scars are still visible in the way of a small hole in the side of my bivvy from the stainless spear that was launched in its direction. This is one of many venues which have large rat populations. Hygiene is of major importance when fishing lakes like this, rats are a carrier of lipto spirosis, commonly known as weil,s disease. In the worst case lypto spirosis can be fatal! Prior to my first trip I had gathered as much information as possible but no one had mentioned the rat infestation. So does that perfect venue exist? I would suggest that it does not. Every venue has some feature that is not what the visiting angler expects, here are a few examples: crowded, trouble from locals, rats, deep, toilets not up to scratch, poor directions, bad swims, smaller than advertised, too many small fish, under stocked, no boats, not scenic, too expensive, dirty, crayfish, poison shits (American catfish) snags and noisy. The moral of the story is, don't let the unexpected spoil your trip, accept the disappointment's if there are any and concentrate on being there enjoying it, adapt, improvise, overcome and above all work to catch! The vast majority of people now have access to the Internet either in their home or via an Internet cafe, how many get the best out of it in regards to venue research? Most tend to use one search engine and one language? In fact the best place to find French lakes is within French search engines using phrases wrote in French! I know you probably don't speak French. That can be overcome with use of translation websites. Here are a useful words, peche (fishing), carpe (carp) and nuit (night). When these phrases are typed into a search engine it will pick up on the French language and list many sites that contain them. The pages are in French as that is the language you typed; a quick web page translation will soon have it appearing in English
