Autumn beauties in deepest France

I suppose autumn didn't really happen this year - summer turned in to winter almost overnight and I was able to witness it at first hand whilst fishing at a lovely French lake just recently. The weather was lovely when I arrived and even at 2am in the morning I was comfortable in just a tee shirt, but within a few days I was wearing all the clothes I had with me and thick frost was covering the ground at first light!

Thankfully the fish seemed to sense that the weather was turning and they fed most days, except for the very coldest. It wasn't an easy trip and for the first couple of days I had no action even though fish were showing over the areas. It took a bit of working out but that always makes it more rewarding when you do bank a fish or two. In the end the answer came from fishing areas which were rock hard on the bottom in depths between two and three metres and switching over to the Quench boilies which thankfully I'd picked up from Christian at Solar on the way down. I was just fishing small areas next to snags or close to the dam wall at the end of the lake and not baiting too heavily, just twenty or thirty whole and broken boilies with a sprinkling of 365 pellets seemed to be what the fish wanted and on the third morning I got things underway with a 37lb mirror. hook baits were fished snowman style with the pop ups being either Quench or Bunspice and Aniseed. The other thing which really made a difference was fishing very slack lines as I'd sussed out that they were very line shy. To combat that, I used long seven metre lengths of lead core - just two from every spool, but it really helped to pin everything down. Two good fish of 41lb and 40lb 4oz came during the following nights along with some smaller fish, but it was 3pm on Wednesday afternoon when I latched in to something which felt much heavier, and after quite a battle I slipped the net under a 54lb 8oz mirror which was enough to make the trip a good 'un!
A few fish followed the next day but then the temperature really dropped and the action stopped and I thought that would be the end of it, but on the final morning it just lifted a little and the fish responded immediately. A final flurry brought three more fish to the bank, two commons of around 20lb apiece and another cracking mirror of 50lb 4oz which looked lovely in the early morning sun. It was a great trip on a water which I hadn't fished before and although it wasn't easy fishing the rewards were certainly there. It took a little bit of thought and the help of the right bait to get things going and it turned out fine - but it looks as though summer is definitely over for 2009!