After the previous session on this monstrous lake had left me feeling a little battered, I’m not ashamed it took me a while to work up towards fishing it again. When the chance for some easier fishing on Rouge came along the following week, I snatched it and temporarily let myself forget about the barrage and the huge challenge of it. However, being the sort to beat myself up about ducking out of something simply because it’s difficult, I knew I’d be back.

After a couple of weekend sessions on the river, and having guests stay for a little while, I was finally able to get back to where I should be: scratching my head by the side of the lake and forcing myself to fish harder and better. I hadn’t been able to keep away from the lake, and even though not fishing it I had been down another four or five times for a look around (guests in tow!). One of these occasions was somewhat surreal, when I arrived to find 14 teams of carp anglers bivvied up and fishing a four-day competition on the lake. I knew the ‘Enduro’ was taking place, but it was hard to imagine the scale of it. I was used to seeing the lake largely deserted, with perhaps an occasional French trout angler. So you can imagine the shock when I walked round to chat to some of the guys - one thing I will say is that ‘Continental Carping’ is a different beast altogether to the sport that I know.

That’s another topic altogether, but the visit was useful in that everything I knew about the lake was confirmed. It was very rarely fished for carp, the stock was low and largely unknown, and it was hard. It was a nice boost for my confidence to see others doing what I had been contemplating for over a month now. I met some nice blokes, and wished them all luck for the weekend.

Returning on Monday morning I discovered that five fish were caught during the match, the biggest being 12kg. The five all fell to different teams, and different tactics so nothing to be learnt there really. However, the guy I spoke to had not fished the match, but knew the lake well. He was a ‘Carpiste’ and had caught fish up to 14kg from the lake, and heard of bigger. I had to stop myself from asking too many questions as we wandered back to the car park, but it transpired that there definitely carp in the lake, and they definitely could be caught - another huge boost, that they might reach 40lb was an incredible bonus!

It was another week before I was free to do any fishing, and by then I was gagging to get there and get started on this campaign. Following the competition there were several newly cut swims that offered better access than the area I had looked at before and so, on yet another walk around I picked out 3 spots that I wanted to cast a lead around and work out.

Of these, one turned out to be a bay that was largely shallow, and sheltered from the fancied south westerly wind, and whilst it looked fishy, it just seemed a bit isolated from the main lake. The last thing I wanted to do was have to rely on a specific wind or set of conditions that might never arrive. The second spot was opposite where I had first tried and looked great, but my attention was instead taken by a third peg. Sitting on the corner of a bay, it offered easy access to both the main body of water and the entrance to the lovely bay on my right.

A more thorough going over revealed that at around 60 yards the water dropped away in excess of 30ft. From this depth, a clean slope came up to a level of around 13ft, at which point the slope became much more gentle, before shelving up steeply into the margins below my feet. I had expected to be fishing at maximum range, I knew that the largest fish from the competition came from the central basin of the lake. However, I couldn’t quite reconcile that the fish would spend time and feed much beyond 30ft, and so decided to concentrate my efforts on the slope between 13ft and 10ft that ran all along the headland to my left.

That first session, after markering around for an hour or so, I decided I might as well get some bait in and throw the rods out too - if only to get them ready for the next session. By this stage it was already gone 8pm so I wasn’t expecting much. On this occasion I put in about a kilo of hemp and corn along with another kilo of pellet and boilie. I wanted to get the fish feding on particles if at all possible, but knew that should bream and tench become a problem, I could rely on fish knowing boilies that were a food source.

Once everything was finally set in the water I took a deep breath and reflected on the fact that, after one false start and much delay, I was finally here and fishing.

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