2011 Catch Analysis for Notaire’s Carp Lake in France

It can be difficult to deduce the trends from the catch reports at a family venue like Notaire’s since the angler usually isn’t fishing as flat out when compared to a Drive and Survive venue. Whilst there were a couple of difficult weeks, both of which occurred after massive temperature swings (seeing as much as 10 degrees increase per day),we are very pleased to report that yet again no one blanked at Notaire’s.  (Chris reaches down to tap the wooden table!)

The chart of the best fish reported shows that, apart from a couple of outliers from the very hot days, most anglers landed a best fish between 35 and 40lb.

Equally this wasn’t at the expense of the total catch (remember, very few family anglers can fish 24/7.) Dave Mutton landed the best result with a catch of 33 carp, closely followed by the Hayden party with 85 carp between 3 anglers.

It’s not so easy to chart the distribution of the fish as the catch returns sometimes came as numbers of fish and sometimes as total weights of fish caught. However, the table above shows that the major cohort lies in the 20-30lb range and that there is a significant number of fish in the 30-40lb range. Our winter feeding programme should see plenty more of this latter group of fish moving into the 40lb+ bracket.

In conclusion, we hope to see you at Notaire’s where you can enjoy arm-aching fights with the younger fish, have the chance to better your PB with carp in the 40lb range, and spend quality time with your family.

At Notaire’s you can have your cake and eat it!

Fishing Holidays in France at Notaires.

Carp Fishing – Tips For Fishing From Staging

Paul Cooper gives you tips on how to fish effectively from staging;

Do You Feed Your Carp In The Winter?

Great fin colour on this Bletiere common – a result of the food it eats?

“Do you feed your carp in winter?”

I often get asked this by guests taking their fishing holidays here at Bletiere – with what and when do I feed the carp, especially in the winter, and how do I know how much to put in?

Luckily I had a lot of experience in the uk before we moved because I kept koi.  Now I don’t claim to be a koi expert, but when you spend up to £300 for a koi that’s only 6 inches long you soon learn to read books and seek out advice and  join clubs where you can learn so much from other enthusiasts.

The hobby of koi keeping is a great way to be able to watch and observe how fish react and behave.  I have to be honest and say it was a great way to see if fish liked the bait you planned to use up the local lake.  Being able to watch fish all year round it gave you a great opportunity to observe the feeding habits of fish and also the way they fed.  It also taught you when to feed and gave you a great insight into how much food to put in.

The big advantage to a large garden pond is that you can see what’s not eaten but also get back out any food that’s left.  In a murky lake you don’t have those luxuries and overfeeding can soon lead to all sorts of problems, not just in garden ponds but in lakes as well.  With my koi hobby I was in the position that I could afford to buy the best food and the best treatments for my fish, but in a lake and running a business you have to be more money focused and remember its your living.

So we moved to France and I suddenly had a very big garden pond and a lot of very hungry big carp that needed feeding all year round!  This is where for me my 20 years koi keeping experience came good.  I also had a lot of friends who were in the fish business to call on for help and advice.  While we waited for our fish to be delivered I went about sourcing a supply of carp pellets to use as feed and to obviously supplement the natural food in the lake that was never going to be enough to sustain the growth we wanted for our fish.  After a lot of internet surfing and seeking advice from whoever I could find I decided on a company that specialized in animal feeds and fish food for fish farmers.  The one I chose had the balance of the food in the ingredients I wanted and they were a competitive price – the only down side was you had to order a ton at a time…& that hits the bank balance!

The Ingredients in Our Carp Pellets

There is a lot of talk about fish foods especially in the koi hobby area and you would regularly see a super new high growth food with loads of secret ingredients in them.  To be honest over the years I often made the mistake of buying them & I learnt that most of them were a waste of money.  Frankly they were no better than some of the cheaper foods. 
You can see from the photo above of our pellet sack label that the balance of the food in these pellets is good (trust me, it is) and it has all you need in a pellet to ensure your fish get a boost with their diet.  You can then supplement the pellets with other foods – more of this later.

When we lived in Bournemouth I was lucky enough to meet and become good friends with a guy who ran a koi shop.  He only sold top quality fish and foods, and it was from him that I learnt some of the ways to save money and still give your fish the best. The one thing he would always  lecture his customers about was the amount of protein a fish can absorb in the time it’s in its body before its passed out, and he always said anything over 34% protein was a waste of your money as the fish does not have time to take more before nature takes it course.

Just as an aside, and me rambling a bit, if you keep koi in the UK don’t buy the expensive koi foods – try “Go Cat” dry cat food in the fish flavors.  If you don’t believe me look at the ingredients on the box and then compare to the box of koi food you use that probably cost 2 or 3 times more!  I used it all the time for my koi and they loved it and it never did them any harm.  The carp in our lake love them as well.  It contains most essential ingredients pond fish need to grow and be content.

Back to France now and the feeding of our carp.  I’ve told you about the pellets I use, not cheap that’s for sure, but it was a way that I was certain the fish were getting some help with their feeding.   But then I had a lucky break.
I was lucky enough to one day to find a fish farm near to us.  He’s the guy I buy all my carp from.  His name is Sebastian & he owns Blue Lake ( I introduced him to Angling Lines & Blue Lake is open to anglers for the first time this year).  It’s from Sebastian that I learnt something that saves me a lot of money in food… and makes for better looking fish.


On one of our  fish buying trip’s I happened to ask Sebastian what pellets he fed to his fish, as I thought they might be cheaper than the ones I use.  He looked at me surprised and said with all his lakes he could not afford to feed pellets and he only fed “mais casse”, which is crushed up French maize.

Sebastian then showed me his stock… he had a barn full of it!  He went onto explain how he feeds –  simply row a boat out into the lake and tip 25kgs sacks of the uncooked maize into the lake.

This maize is really crushed small, so please don’t think it’s like the whole uncooked maize that he’s tipping into the lake.  It’s definitely not and that would be extremely dangerous for the carp (and your health if you got caught!)
I actually saw Sebastian feeding the fish at Blue Lake once and he just tipped in 150kgs of the stuff, left it for a few days and then checked if it had been eaten – which it had.

This seemed too good a way to save money on feeding to ignore, so I checked with a few friends in the UK.  One of them had a friend who was a lecture at a famous college that teaches fish management and also carries out studies on fish feeding and production to help poorer countries.  He confirmed to me that maize was a great source of food for carp, as was wheat, as they both helped develop the muscles in fish and don’t  just bloat the fish out, producing those fat, ugly (my view only) carp you see that are fed kilos of boilies.  As an added advantage it also produces amazing colours in the carp as well – take a look at the photo at the start of this post to see what I mean.

So armed with all this information I now feed my fish a mixture of both.  I do boil my seed  as the wheat has to be softened.  It  helps with growth, makes the fish grow leaner with more muscle and, especially in the commons, gives rise to great colour in the fins.

I feed the fish daily even when it’s cold. I have to be honest and say that the amount of food I put in is nowhere near enough to feed all our carp as the college told me that you should feed 10% of the biomass of the fish a day, or in other words 10% of the weight of fish.  As you can imagine that would be a lot of food and costs.

I believe I have got the feeding just about correct as we are achieving some great weight gains and some stunning looking carp, especially the commons (my favorites).

The pellets are a slow dissolving pellets so that gives the carp a chance to find them. I sell them to our guest as feed as it makes sense to bait up with something the fish know as a food source.  We get a lot of fish caught on them as they stay on the hair for a long time.  I sell them at a good price as I would rather know what’s going in the lake than a lot of cheap pellets that do not do the fish or water quality much good.

I hope this has been of interest and will answer one of the questions that I get asked often.  Tight lines and look forward to seeing some of you soon,

John, La Bletiere

Do You Feed Your Carp In The Winter?

Great fin colour on this Bletiere common – a result of the food it eats?

“Do you feed your carp in winter?”

I often get asked this by guests taking their fishing holidays here at Bletiere – with what and when do I feed the carp, especially in the winter, and how do I know how much to put in?

Luckily I had a lot of experience in the uk before we moved because I kept koi.  Now I don’t claim to be a koi expert, but when you spend up to £300 for a koi that’s only 6 inches long you soon learn to read books and seek out advice and  join clubs where you can learn so much from other enthusiasts.

The hobby of koi keeping is a great way to be able to watch and observe how fish react and behave.  I have to be honest and say it was a great way to see if fish liked the bait you planned to use up the local lake.  Being able to watch fish all year round it gave you a great opportunity to observe the feeding habits of fish and also the way they fed.  It also taught you when to feed and gave you a great insight into how much food to put in.

The big advantage to a large garden pond is that you can see what’s not eaten but also get back out any food that’s left.  In a murky lake you don’t have those luxuries and overfeeding can soon lead to all sorts of problems, not just in garden ponds but in lakes as well.  With my koi hobby I was in the position that I could afford to buy the best food and the best treatments for my fish, but in a lake and running a business you have to be more money focused and remember its your living.

So we moved to France and I suddenly had a very big garden pond and a lot of very hungry big carp that needed feeding all year round!  This is where for me my 20 years koi keeping experience came good.  I also had a lot of friends who were in the fish business to call on for help and advice.  While we waited for our fish to be delivered I went about sourcing a supply of carp pellets to use as feed and to obviously supplement the natural food in the lake that was never going to be enough to sustain the growth we wanted for our fish.  After a lot of internet surfing and seeking advice from whoever I could find I decided on a company that specialized in animal feeds and fish food for fish farmers.  The one I chose had the balance of the food in the ingredients I wanted and they were a competitive price – the only down side was you had to order a ton at a time…& that hits the bank balance!

The Ingredients in Our Carp Pellets

There is a lot of talk about fish foods especially in the koi hobby area and you would regularly see a super new high growth food with loads of secret ingredients in them.  To be honest over the years I often made the mistake of buying them & I learnt that most of them were a waste of money.  Frankly they were no better than some of the cheaper foods.

You can see from the photo above of our pellet sack label that the balance of the food in these pellets is good (trust me, it is) and it has all you need in a pellet to ensure your fish get a boost with their diet.  You can then supplement the pellets with other foods – more of this later.

When we lived in Bournemouth I was lucky enough to meet and become good friends with a guy who ran a koi shop.  He only sold top quality fish and foods, and it was from him that I learnt some of the ways to save money and still give your fish the best. The one thing he would always  lecture his customers about was the amount of protein a fish can absorb in the time it’s in its body before its passed out, and he always said anything over 34% protein was a waste of your money as the fish does not have time to take more before nature takes it course.

Just as an aside, and me rambling a bit, if you keep koi in the UK don’t buy the expensive koi foods – try “Go Cat” dry cat food in the fish flavors.  If you don’t believe me look at the ingredients on the box and then compare to the box of koi food you use that probably cost 2 or 3 times more!  I used it all the time for my koi and they loved it and it never did them any harm.  The carp in our lake love them as well.  It contains most essential ingredients pond fish need to grow and be content.

Back to France now and the feeding of our carp.  I’ve told you about the pellets I use, not cheap that’s for sure, but it was a way that I was certain the fish were getting some help with their feeding.   But then I had a lucky break.

I was lucky enough to one day to find a fish farm near to us.  He’s the guy I buy all my carp from.  His name is Sebastian & he owns Blue Lake ( I introduced him to Angling Lines & Blue Lake is open to anglers for the first time this year).  It’s from Sebastian that I learnt something that saves me a lot of money in food… and makes for better looking fish.

On one of our  fish buying trip’s I happened to ask Sebastian what pellets he fed to his fish, as I thought they might be cheaper than the ones I use.  He looked at me surprised and said with all his lakes he could not afford to feed pellets and he only fed “mais casse”, which is crushed up French maize.

Sebastian then showed me his stock… he had a barn full of it!  He went onto explain how he feeds –  simply row a boat out into the lake and tip 25kgs sacks of the uncooked maize into the lake.

This maize is really crushed small, so please don’t think it’s like the whole uncooked maize that he’s tipping into the lake.  It’s definitely not and that would be extremely dangerous for the carp (and your health if you got caught!)

I actually saw Sebastian feeding the fish at Blue Lake once and he just tipped in 150kgs of the stuff, left it for a few days and then checked if it had been eaten – which it had.

This seemed too good a way to save money on feeding to ignore, so I checked with a few friends in the UK.  One of them had a friend who was a lecture at a famous college that teaches fish management and also carries out studies on fish feeding and production to help poorer countries.  He confirmed to me that maize was a great source of food for carp, as was wheat, as they both helped develop the muscles in fish and don’t  just bloat the fish out, producing those fat, ugly (my view only) carp you see that are fed kilos of boilies.  As an added advantage it also produces amazing colours in the carp as well – take a look at the photo at the start of this post to see what I mean.

So armed with all this information I now feed my fish a mixture of both.  I do boil my seed  as the wheat has to be softened.  It  helps with growth, makes the fish grow leaner with more muscle and, especially in the commons, gives rise to great colour in the fins.

I feed the fish daily even when it’s cold. I have to be honest and say that the amount of food I put in is nowhere near enough to feed all our carp as the college told me that you should feed 10% of the biomass of the fish a day, or in other words 10% of the weight of fish.  As you can imagine that would be a lot of food and costs.

I believe I have got the feeding just about correct as we are achieving some great weight gains and some stunning looking carp, especially the commons (my favorites).

The pellets are a slow dissolving pellets so that gives the carp a chance to find them. I sell them to our guest as feed as it makes sense to bait up with something the fish know as a food source.  We get a lot of fish caught on them as they stay on the hair for a long time.  I sell them at a good price as I would rather know what’s going in the lake than a lot of cheap pellets that do not do the fish or water quality much good.

I hope this has been of interest and will answer one of the questions that I get asked often.  Tight lines and look forward to seeing some of you soon,

John, La Bletiere

Carp Fishing Interview with Mark Lambert of Villefond

Here’s a new feature we’re going to run… interviews with our owners.  This week it’s Mark Lambert from Villefond;

1.  What are the 5 main features you look for in selecting a swim;

1. When selecting my swim I always wait until I arrive at the lake as pictures and maps can never really give you an accurate picture.  The first thing I do when selecting is speak to the owner/bailiff or if they are not there anyone one with local knowledge.  This is important because if they are on the bank every day they will have a better knowledge than anyone on where the fish hold up, feed, patrol etc.

2.  I would look for fish signs – for example topping fish or feeding signs.

3.  I would look for fish holding spots for example lily’s, over hanging trees, snags, islands etc

4.  I would look at the depth of water including features or gulley’s (this is where local knowledge can save lots of time).

5.  I would look at the bottom for features like gravel patches etc (again speaking to someone will save the effort and disturbance of finding these yourself)

2.  Do you believe the moon has any influence on carp fishing?

I don’t think there is any doubt the moon affects fish both in the lakes and in the sea – but I don’t necessarily think that there are times you defiantly will/won’t catch fish because of where the moon is in its cycle.  In fishing there are so many factors involved in catching fish and I don’t really let the moon factor in too much because like most fishermen I have limited windows in which to fish so don’t really have the flexibility to fish according to when I think the moon might increase fish activity.

3.   What are the 5 mistakes you most often see visiting anglers make?

1.  The first most frequent mistake would be not listening.  As a venue owner it’s in my best interest for everyone to catch well and being able to see what people have used the weeks before to catch fish I will give advice according to what has been working.  On arrival I always tell everyone what to avoid and what works to try to save time and help people catch some monsters.  However, some anglers wait until mid-week after not catching well before listening.  I am not conceited enough to believe I am the best angler and my advice would be always perfect, but I advise on what has worked the previous week for the last anglers and the few consistent things that help or hinder on our lake.

2.  The second biggest mistake is assuming that every lake is the same and because one tactic works on a particular French water than it will work the same on every other French water.  I find our lake changes literally from week to week as the fish are all big, smart and quickly adjust to bait , tactics etc… so preconceived ideas can often waste a few precious days of fishing where doing that extra bit of homework like reading catch reports and speaking to the owners could save time and lost fish.

3.  The third biggest mistake I think would be noise.  This might link with assuming all lakes are the same because some lakes the fish have more competition with smaller carp or different species so can’t afford to be to spooky.  But on our lake noise will literally send the fish to the other side of the lake.  I have witnessed people fish to one spot on the lake and catch fish all week then decide to move right towards the end of the week to save the long cast and the noise on the new bank has scared the fish off to a different part of the lake.

4.  The forth biggest mistake I think would be paitence.  Sometimes with such big fish they take a few days to feel confident enough to feed to a patch of bait or to try a new type of bait.  I have had fishermen arrive on Saturday afternoon and by Monday morning have not had a fish and told me they have tried every possible tactic and bait and nothing has worked.  To give every spot, tactic, bait, and rig set-up a fair try would takes more time than any one person has on our lake, so being patient can often be key.  Sometimes fishermen have done themselves more harm than good by trying so many different spots that by the time the fish have found the first bed of bait they are making a new spot and in a few days there are so many beds of bait the fish are spread all over the place.

5.  The last mistake people on our lake would be bait.  Again this tie’s in with assuming every lake is the same.  On runs waters or even lakes with more competition from species such as bream or tench, or lakes with less natural food, then any bait will catch fish because of the competition.  Our lake has so much natural food which is great for the fish and helps them to put on really healthy weights but they have an alternative to the fisherman’s bait all year round.  This means that poor quality boillies especially will catch far less fish and it’s not just a case of putting in as much bait as possible.  On some lakes this will work but on ours quality of bait will definitely make a difference and quantity is a case of judgment on the bank.

Really hope this is of some use,

Regards, Mark

Carp Fishing – Getting The Best Out Of A Gas Bottle In Winter

Paul Cooper gives you tips on how to get the best out of a gas bottle in winter;

Recycling in France – How You Can Help Carp Lake Owners

One of the big differences you find when you move to Europe is the high level of recycling that you have to do without choice.  It’s very strictly controlled here in France, which of course in the long term is a good thing for us all.

Over the last year they have been rolling out stricter rules on what you can recycle and what you cannot.  They have also significantly increased the cost of the weekly refuse pickups  and now charge after an agreed amount of bin collections each year.

When it first came out here at Bletiere we thought it was another way for the government to make money but now having had the chance to look at it and started to recycle more, we realize just how much you can save.  This is good as we can recycle as much as we want and at no charge and they even supply free of charge special yellow bags for this.

On the 2^nd of January they rolled out the last part of the new system and have greatly added to what you can recycle.  To be honest there is not much you cannot send back now other than food waste and a few types of plastic – the hard part is getting into the habit of recycling.

The bins are randomly checked so we do have to stick to the rules.  It’s a warning first time we bin items on the list and then potential fines if we stray from the guide lines – and this is where we ask the help of our guests.

The last thing we want to do is interfere with the enjoyment of our guests fishing holidays but it’s not a nice job going through the bins at the end of the week, but we have done it in the past!

In the UK the councils are not so strict and a lot of people are not used to having to recycle – so everything goes in the dustbin. We have always supplied different bins here for recycling and will continue to do so and we will put signs up to show what must be recycled and we ask guests to read and please separate for us… if in any doubts please just ask.

This may seem to be yet another one of those EU Directives that seem to be churned out from Brussels but we believe that this is a good one and it will hopefully encourage more people to recycle, after all it all helps to save on the eye sores of landfills.

Tight lines, John and Lesley

Bletiere