Tidy up nearly finished at Bletiere carp lake

John London is the owner of Bletiere and through this Blog section he’s going to keep a diary of the daily life of a French carp lake owner.

Having had a very mild and dry winter up to now we’ve managed to get the lake spring clean finished a lot earlier than usual.  This is really good as last year due to the snow and wet we working up to the week before our first guests arrived in March.

We have strimmed all the banks and raked them.  It’s something I always do as it encourages the wild flowers to grow and helps keep the nettles and brambles down – why is it that weeds always grow and flowers sometimes struggle?

We have cut back all the trees around the lake as these sometimes caused problems for guests with the wind blowing the line over branches, but still left plenty to give a bit of a challenge to reach those fish.

Today we worked on the house swim and cut down all the old bulrushes.  I put on my waders and went in to clear their roots that were spreading across the lake edge and sticking out from the end which made landing fish harder.

I also cleared all the iris and bulrushes that were slowly blocking up the swim to the right, so there is now more room to land fish and also to put your pods or bank sticks.

I also spent some time picking up some rocks that were close in and may have caused problems.  I moved any I kicked and took them out the lake.

Tomorrow I will start my trips up to the local saw mill and get a few trailer loads of wood chip to top up the swims and help to keep the mud down and fishing gear cleaner.  It also helps to keep the bank side noise down.

We have been feeding the fish all winter and over the last week they have been very active and feeding heavily.  This will hopefully reflect in the weights this year, and hopefully that first carp over 45lb will come out.

Hopefully anyone taking advantage of our early season offers will have some good fish out and if they continue to feed as they are now I can even see a new lake record coming out early on.

Tight lines and we will publish more as the big tidy up continues,

Best wishes,

John and Lesley, Bletiere