Etang Meunier
A Magical French Carp Session At Etang Meunier
I arrived at Limoges station in central France at 17:00 hours and met my long time friend and fishing partner Colin Bunn, the owner of Catmaster Tours, for a weeks carping on Etang Meunier. Colin had already done a week and had caught 11 fish including 3 fifties to 54lbs plus so we were hopeful of a good second week. It had been raining for 7 days almost non stop and wasn’t very warm but the fish had been feeding so we didn’t care. The lake itself is a gorgeous place that is 7 acres I size, stream fed and surrounded by trees and woodland, making both very quiet and incredibly tranquil. There is no weed to really worry about and has variable depths, ranging from 3 foot margins to 16 foot in the middle. It is home to some lovely carp with the lake record standing at a shade over 64lbs. there are also a good head of 40 to 50lb fish resident, with very few of the stock being below 20lbs.
Being mainly a Catfish angler this was my first French Carp trip, and as you can guess, I was buzzing to get started. We decided to fish from what is known as “The House swim” and during the session we kept our noise and disturbance to an absolute minimum, to prevent spooking the very cautious resident carp. I chose the left hand side of the swim as this gave me the choice of a lot of potentially good areas to set my traps. From his previous experience of the venue, Colin told me that stealth and quiet were the tricks here so all baited rigs and free offerings were bait boated to the spots and left 24 hours unless we had a take. My set up was 15 pound mainline and a 4oz lead attached via a lead clip. My hooklengths comprised of 7 inches of Suffix Camfusion coated braid, with the last inch stripped back to create a hinged section. To finish the rig off, I opted to use the excellent GARDNER TACKLE Continental Mugga in a size 10, utilising a KD rig presentation.
I was asked by Marl Leonard, the owner of MAD BAITS if I would have a play around with a new bait flavour that was yet to be released called ‘THE FORCE’. Mark informed me this was going to be the one of the best baits that the fast growing Cambridgeshire based Company had produced to date. So when I agreed, he generously rolled me a few kilo’s of 10mm boilies for the trip along with some pink fluro matching pop ups. I presented the FORCE boilies snowman style so that the bait was popped up with the hook flat on the bottom, to prevent these cautious aquatic creatures backing away from my baited spots and rigs. The presentation and rig performed perfectly in my rig and bait testing jar and turned perfectly in my hand, so I was super confident that I had everything at the business end sorted.
My two rigs were placed in the Angling Techniques Microcat Baitboat with a handful of boilies and two handfuls of Dynamite baits Partiblend in each hopper and guided out to my chosen spots with the aid of an echo sounder built into the boat. These were dropped on the areas I fancied and then the boat was loaded again for my third rod.
Knowing this was very tough water and the fish don’t come easily, I was really pleased to get off the mark on the first night with a Common at 37lbs 06oz. Strangely enough this was the last fish to come in the hours of darkness until the last night, with all the other fish coming in daylight. The rain stopped but it was very cold and some days very windy. We carried on with the same baiting pattern, once every 24 hours to keep disturbance to a minimum and we both caught fish every day. Colin caught another nine including two more fifties on the Friday before we left. I had five fish in total including two commons at 37lbs 06oz and 53lbs 02oz, my other fish were all mirrors weighing in at 36lbs 10oz, 45lbs 08oz and a birthday beast which weighed in at 49lbs which was landed just two hours before we packed up to end a great trip.
Foot Note – Another unexpected highlight of the trip was stalking the resident Fire Salamander at night. They put in appearance on the wet warm nights we were at this amazing venue and these stunning creatures are to found by searching in the woodland behind our swim. A very slow moving majestic reptile indeed and well worth looking out for!
Tight Lines
Julian Barnes