Friday, the 27th of September and i'm off to the south of France for a 9 day session to fish a public gravel pit with my two Spanish mates Marc and Ximpi. Upon my arrival, there were already a lot of anglers on the lake for the weekend and after a quick walk around i realized that there was not much room, so ended up settling for a swim located in the middle of the gravel pit.
I used my marker rod to find the clean spots and I opted for 3 pva solid bags given the amount of weed that i found. At around 8pm i was fishing and ready for the night. After the 8 hour drive down i was feeling tired so a quick cup of tea and a couple of toasted cheese sandwiches and i was off to sleep. I was awoken some time later during the night by what turned out to be a big tench but to be honest i did not sleep to well the first night due to a few more tench and some suspicious looking people walking past my swim and cars driving up and down all night.
The next 24hrs passed with out any activity apart from a few more tench but early the next morning i had my first carp after a good 20 minute battle i eventually slid my net under a low twenty mirror, yes !. That same morning i saw a lot of fish activity behind the island so I moved swim in the afternoon as most of the weekend anglers had packed up and gone home.
After a few hours set up in my new swim my friends arrived to join me for the rest of the session. I decided to swims my rigs out to the island and find some clean spots as it was very weedy and boats are not allowed on this lake. Two rods went to the left of the island with 5 kilos of King Prawn Crafty Catcher boilies and 2 rods to the right with another 5kgs of boilies and 5kgs of hempseed,tigernuts. All rods were fished using PVA bags over the top. And my plan worked!!
Over the next few days I kept baiting my spots and swimming my rigs out.I caught 2 carp over 20 kilos, and 2 over 25kg and the queen of the of lake.
A truly unforgettable session with good friends
By Danny Stanmore
