France 2006
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The Colossus
We had been fishing for a couple of days with some success, Perry and I up in swims 8 and 9 had I think five carp, all twenties I had three, biggest 28lb 8oz and Perry's biggest so far being 26lb. The carp were there but not staying there, most of the takes were after dark when the carp moved out from under the overhanging trees on the far bank. We knew this because Steve was getting fish from his margin on swim 7 anytime during the day and evening. Carp were not showing themselves like they had the previous year which we had put down to the cold, wet and windy weather conditions, how could we tempt them a bit further out from the tree line? We decided to do this with bait, not just a case of lumping loads in, no, the idea was to use the bait boat to lay a fine carpet of small pellets and crushed halibut pellets along with crushed boillies, all along the tree line but a good distance from the trees as to not risk the fish getting into the trees and damaging themselves. This might sound fairly straightforward, but considering we didn't want loads of bait just dumped in a few places, it took ages and many trips with the boat to lay the bait as we wanted, we wanted the carp to keep travelling up and down the tree line feeding but using energy to find the food. So that was the plan and it was executed on the nose, not too much bait but enough to keep em looking for more!
Rods at the ready
Darkness fell (I must pick that up and put it safe) the baits were out and ready, the weather had settled down, not so much wind and the temperature had risen during the day, so what wind there was seemed to be a mild one.
The right hand rod screamed into action! I wound down and eased the rod back over my head, I could feel a very powerful fish taking the rod into it's full battle curve, now although I tend to fish with my clutches set fairly tightly this fish started to take short bursts of line from the reel. I knew straight away this was a better fish, it started to kite sharply to my left, not in a normal arc more just taking line as though it wanted to keep as tight to the opposite tree line as it could. By this time Perry was at my side giving me the old `take it easy son´could be a big fish routine. I was winning with the fish but I did have one or two heart stopping moments when the fish tried hard to get in amongst the tree roots and overhanging branches to the left of my swim. The fish then showed itself about 5yds away from the waiting landing net, it was a big common, a very long common indeed. Now, I meant to say ėt's colossal but, for some strange reason it came out as ` ėts colossus´ Perry thinking it was a named fish said well done son looks like you have caught colossus, all I kept saying after that was, great it's colossus and lets get colossus in the weigh sling etc etc. We had a good laugh and weighed the fish at 39lb took a couple of pictures and returned `Colossus´ back to fight another day.
Two shots of Colossus
The Coypu
For those readers that have not been to France before, I thought I would just give a small bit of information about a certain rodent that are very frequent visitors to your swim in France, the Coypu. These rat like creatures inhabit many of the lakes and rivers in France, don't worry they won't hurt you, but if you do not like rats they can give you a bit of a scare when they waddle right up to you just when it's getting dark for the odd boillie!! They are originally from South America, how they came to be in France I don't know, they were imported into the UK nearly 100years ago for the fur trade so I suppose the same was true for France. The biggest can be about 2' in length, that's without the tail, but the average would be about 18'' long. They are not all that shy when on the bank as the picture shows, but always seem to dive underwater when they are swimming across the lake and disturbed. They have been known to take anglers baits in shallow water, but feed mostly on vegetable matter at the waterside. When fishing a Les Quis many years ago I had a coypu pick up a bait that I was fishing under an overhanging tree on the far side of the lake, I didn't hook the coypu but it managed to leave my hook snagged two feet back from the waterside in the bank, I retrieved my end tackle later, by the use of a boat we had there. If you do come across these at the waterside, don't worry they won't hurt you, as already said, so don't hurt them just let them carry on foraging for there grub for the night!
Note the coypu's webbed back feet, I managed to take three pictures at fairly close range of our visitor.