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Hooked On Carping: Fishing in France For A Carp PB
In this article, Angling Direct are joined by carp fishing enthusiast, James (Jimmy) Penrose. Jimmy talks us through his fishing holiday in France for carp.
France is the place to be for any specimen angler. Home to some of the most breathtaking lakes, France carp fishing offers monstrous-sized carp that carp anglers can only dream of catching. If it’s a Personal Best and the fish of a lifetime you want, fishing holidays to France are great for you.
Best Carp Lakes in France
The are vast amounts of carp fishing lakes in France, whether that be venues such as the ever-famous Gigantica, to smaller more intimate pits such as Lac Luna. Hosted by some of the best people it becomes your choice in which way you want your French carping trip to be,
For me, we decided on the France fishing lakes; Brittany Mill Lakes complex and the beautiful Lake Cadouzan.
Brittany Mill offers a fantastic service in being able to fly there. Being from the North West of England this played detrimental to our trip choice saving us a 6-hour journey to Dover and then an 8-hour trek to the Complex. The French offer a vast amount of trip choices to suit anybody’s needs and angling expectations.
Through this article, we are going to cover every step of the journey from the research and preparation, to being right on the bank in the quest to catch a French PB.
Research: Where can I carp fish in France?
Once you’ve decided to embark on a fishing trip to France the first step is finding the right location and lake to suit you, are you looking for ease like we did at Brittany Mill Lakes? Are you looking to try and catch a 70lb carp of a lifetime? Are you looking to put your feet up, sunbathe with a bevvy and chuck the rods? These are the questions you need to ask yourself at this point.
The best place to begin your research is the good ol’ internet, simply typing in Google 'French carp fishing trips' will bring up an abundance of articles, websites, and third-party booking companies.
Have a good old read of articles featured in popular fishing magazines, and refine your search to what you want to take away from a French trip, You don’t want to spend your hard-earned cash in search of a carp that doesn’t exist on the lake you end up on, that’s where your research pays a big part of how much you’ll enjoy your trip.
Once you’ve whittled down a few locations chuck them into Facebook to see posts of anglers who have visited there, message the lake pages and even get in touch with other anglers from posts you see to find out the information you're looking for. There’s no taking away from the sport that the majority are always happy to help and are like-minded people.
Local anglers in the area can always be a good shout. Again using the power of social media get in touch with them and ask them the questions you want to know. The more you ask and the more you research, the more destined you’ll be to find the perfect French carping trip to suit you and your party.
Gearing Up for France Fishing Holiday
Without a shadow of a doubt gearing up and your preparation work has a detrimental effect on how your trip will pan out, I'm a massive believer that within carp angling the work you put in at home, the more you will be rewarded on the bank.
My first trip to France was no exception, I spent countless hours for weeks on end in front of the laptop watching tutorials, reading articles and posts from anglers that frequently fished abroad and tied an abundance of rigs to make sure I was prepped and ready to go.
Selecting the correct carp rod and reel was one of the first areas I focused on, to me everything from your line, leads, rigs, hooks and baits need to be stepped up, fishing for carp that double in size to the fish on my local water this only seemed to make sense when the upmost important thing for any angler should be fish care.
Best Carp Rod and Reel Combo
When selecting your rod and reel take into consideration whether are you going to be casting a 4-5oz lead over 100 yards constantly all week. Your rod, reel and line need to be able to withstand that.
For us we were lucky enough to be able to hire RT4s on the complex so a 10ft rod of 3.5lb test curve would suffice, using a bait boat at distances up to 150 yards out my Daiwa Emblems paired with 18lb Syncro XT was the suitable choice.
These are all things you need to find out before heading over to your chosen lake. You need your tackle to be suitable for the angling situation you are in and you need it to work well. It’s worth remembering every bite you get in France could be the fish of a lifetime.
What is the best bait for carp fishing?
Bait options need some careful consideration, you need a bait you can trust, you are happy using and know how to get the best out of it and you need it to be desirable for the carp you are targeting.
There is one simple thing you can do to get the best answer for this, Ask the owners. There won’t be anyone who knows the lake better than the lake owners and bailiffs, their knowledge is valuable, and they own and feed the carp in the off-season. Use it to your advantage.
I have been lucky enough to work with a couple of bait companies in my angling career, but from asking the lake owners at Brittany Mill what bait goes into Cadouzan, Mainline Cell and Fishery Pellet was the bait we used.
That information was the difference between us not just having a few carp a piece but instead landing 73 carp in a week 11 of which were over 40lb in early November.
What attracts carp the most?
How you use the bait on the bank is completely your choice and down to your experience as an angler, I think the best place to start being less is more unless you’ve been advised otherwise.
I believe I’ve had sessions and blanked purely because I’ve tried a concoction of magic and potions prepping bait that simply just don’t work as it becomes too much. As a week progresses I think start adding small effects to see how you get on, never attempt to do this to your full amount of bait. If it doesn’t work and you don’t have access to buy more you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
Add a bit of crumb and see how it does, add a bit of smart liquid, add a bit of pellet. Do this with small amounts of bait when spodding or putting bait into the hoppers of a bait boat, find which works and stick with it.
What is the best hookbait for carp?
Hookbaits are down to preference, there is a ridiculous amount available on the market, whichever ones you are most comfortable using, use them, but make sure you put in the effort at home to test them in a bucket or other rig testing equipment you have.
You need the confidence that if you use a pop-up on a spinner rig with a size 2 or 4 hook it is going to pop the rig up as it is supposed to, preparation is a must for this, if your rigs aren’t presented properly you aren’t fishing, it’s a long trip to make to not catch so you need to be confident in your setup.
I found that CC Moore NS1 Popups 12mm worked extremely well on a spinner and during the dark hours a red dumbbell wafter to be effective when used with a German rig as we added red maggots to the mix later in the trip (these are extremely special in France!).
Keeping your bait in top shape for your journey is imperative, make sure it is freezer bait is stored correctly in cool boxes enough to see you to the bank and last whilst you’re fishing. If you choose to take shelf life have a check in with the lake rules to make sure they allow it as some lake owners aren’t keen on the breakdown of shelf life bait once in the water.
Can you take fishing bait to France 2023?
Importantly if you are flying DO NOT take boilies with you, they are classed as animal feed products and will not make it through customs. Hookbaits are classed as fishing lures and therefore allowed to be stored in your suitcase when travelling by flight.
Make sure your spools are in your suitcase and not your hand luggage. Also, fishing line is classed as dangerous for flight and your spools will be confiscated, I couldn’t even imagine the nightmare that would cause!
Shop Angling Direct France or Europe and have your items shipped to your hotel.
Setting Up for Carp Fishing
The worst task of any fishing session is setting the gear up, taking into consideration a few simple things that not only make you more effective on the bank but also more comfortable.
Location is everything when setting up for a week’s fishing in France. You could have the most expensive tackle in the world and the most attractive bait available, if the fish aren’t there in front of your swim, you won't catch it that simple.
I made the same mistake which led to a less fruitful beginning to my trip to Lake Cadouzan. I spoke to the lake owner and pitched up camp, what I should have done was put the kettle on, perched down for an hour and got the binoculars out to watch the water. A strategy that proved useful for the latter two-thirds of the trip and a costly mistake I’ll never make again.
Where is the best place to find carp in a lake?
Get your boots laced up, have a walk around the lake, take the tips of the bailiffs and go find them. Look for your crashing, fizzing and swirling and watch the feeding patterns of the carp. They could have feeding holes or they could be grabbing a bite and swimming off.
Watching these carp behaviours will help you determine whether you’ll be looking to knick a bite or if you’re placing a rig right in the middle of the dancefloor. Check your snaggy areas, and reedy areas, use your knowledge and hunt them down.
A busy angler is a successful angler. The work you put in will amount to the rewards you get out, if you must get up and move swims then so be it, trust your head and your gut and you won’t be far off.
Once you’ve found your spot and set up camp, make sure your bivvy is facing away from the wind. keep everything tidy so you aren’t tripping up over yourself. Set your rods and pod up in plenty of space.
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Setting up correctly can help you avoid trashing your rods every time you get into a carp. Bigger carp require a bigger space to play them. On a cold November night, it’s better to be setting up one rod instead of the full three.
Techniques For Catching Big Carp
Checking your rigs before casting them or boating them out is one of the final pieces of the puzzle, Hands down I forget to do it all the time but chucking them in the edge or a bucket before putting them out can be a massive error if forgotten.
I made the error of loading all my hookbaits into one large Trakker pot mixing wafters with pop-ups, an absolute noddy mistake. Checking them in the edge to ensure I had pop-ups on my spinners and wafters on my German rigs was something I’m glad I remembered.
All that work and effort could have been screwed by one simple mistake having not checked, once I’d checked my rigs were performing the way they were meant to be, a quick dry off, foamed up and then they were ready to be sent out.
Fishing at a distance using a bait boat with autopilot and GPS can be quite tricky, but using the same principle of trees for markers and standing in the same space every time you’re baiting up can be just as effective.
By all means, if you’re fishing as a group grab one of your mates to go to the far side of the lake and have a look at where you’re dropping your rigs. It pays to be that little bit more precise. I always take fishing with me a stick of chalk if I’m fishing off a jetty or wooden peg.
Just to mark a line straight across my feet so I stand in the same spot and angle every time, chalk washes away obviously so this only works under the right conditions. A tiny bit of marker elastic on your line tied in a small, neat granny knot also works so you can ensure you have a marker for the exact distance on your line every recast.
How do you approach a new carp water?
Adjusting your approach also plays a big part in catching big carp. We found on our trip that the carp would often spend the majority of the day avoiding bright hookbaits and taking bottom baits from deeper waters stepped in further into the centre of the lake. Then going on for late afternoon the carp would go into a frenzy and home in bright coloured pop-ups!
Carp were tight up to margins yet being more wary of heavy loads of boilie, but demolishing their way through house pellet and red maggots. These are all signs that you’ll pick up through the week. Noting them down in your phone their feeding patterns, locations of crashes and time of bites. It all helps give you the best chance of getting into your French PB.
It was using this information that helped me to move to a swim where I had an absolute red letter weeklong session, picking them off as they were travelling between deeper and shallower water and utilizing their feeding to match the bait I was putting out for them, sometimes you have to make your own luck and carp angling is certainly no different.
Patience and Persistence
You will not find a person that blows their top quicker than me and loses their patience when driving on the motorways of England or when I’ve got my head stuck in a boiler that I can’t fix. However, as a carp angler, I have the patience of a saint. You’d not think I was the same person driving to the lake as the person I am on the lake.
Patience is one of the most detrimental parts of angling for me. Whether that be fishing in France, on local water, watching tutorials at home or learning the art of specimen carp angling, everything takes time.
I see it all but too often people frustratingly dump bait into lakes, messing with their rigs and doing anything they can to force a bite. I don’t believe in that approach. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Hunting for PB carp won’t happen overnight.
I’ve been caught out by it myself I think we all have, making rash decisions might work on a one-off, but if you put trust into your work and your preparation, just relax and enjoy watching the water.
You can see what the carp catch on and make your decisions from there. If you aren’t into sitting and watching the water enjoy your time being on the lake and have a laugh with your pals but be patient with the hard work you’ve already put in to this point.
Some people might have different views on it to myself but constantly changing hookbaits, rigs, baits and locations in your swim don’t equal bites for me. Be patient and do one thing at a time.
How To Fish A Long Session
Long fishing sessions are hard, our lass is a fickler for giving me stick when I tell her I’m knackered after a long session on the bank. It’s the best thing in the world but it’s a graft there’s no two ways about it.
Staying focused is a big thing and for me, on longer sessions, I like to timetable my day to make sure I’m making the most of my time on the bank. Granted you never know when your alarms will scream off or something will happen that’ll change your day but having set times for doing things has always helped me stay switched on whilst I’m on the bank.
Staying motivated is the other big one, don’t ever let your head drop. I’m by no means a sceptical person but I do feel the minute I start getting stressed on the bank it radiates to affect my angling. It’s not over until that last rod is out of the water! There’s never a wasted minute on the bank. A blank is a lesson learned not a wasted session.
Being with your mates and having a social will always beat any party for me straight up, I could have had the worst week on record and ten minutes into fishing with my mates and it’s all forgotten about. Fishing seriously and on your own is massively rewarding. You keep switched on and more focused into the session, but nothing beats having a good old laugh with your pals on the bank for me. Wherever in the world that could be.
Overall, there are a few things to remember to help guide you into catching a PB carp in France,
- Research – Do as much research as you can into location, speaking to anglers with experience fishing in France, rigs and rig mechanics. Ask your local AD what tackle and bait people are using successfully in France and What type of French Angling trip will best suit your needs.
- Preparation and Practice – Preparing for a trip abroad at home pays massively when you arrive on the bank, your rigs will work how you want them to, your bait will work for you however you choose to use it and your watercraft will help you whilst on the bank, all these things you can do on your local waters, practice makes perfect and failing to prepare then prepare to fail, two massive quotes I refer to in any of my angling.
- Make the most of your trip - You’ve done the legwork at home, you’ve booked your trip, you’ve done all your research, and getting on the bank becomes the easy bit. Enjoy your time in France!
There’s a special place In my heart for my French PBs, it’s a lot of work whether you are fishing on a relaxed scale with hosts or on a lake in the middle of nowhere in the French nation.
It’s a reward like no other when you’ve battled a beast of a carp and slipped the net under your new PB knowing how all the preparation, decisions and efforts on the bank have finally paid off.
I blanked for the first two nights on my first trip to France, staying focused, determined and motivated. A few adjustments, a move of swims and a good outlook resulted in myself and my two best mates landing 73 carp 11 over the forty-pound mark in early November. A result we never would have expected and a trip that gave us memories that will last a lifetime.
France isn’t your backyard water. It can be tricky to put all this into practice on the bank but trust me when I tell you this, when you’re rewarded for all your hard work on a lake you’ve never fished that you’ve travelled to another country for and put countless hours into at home. The feeling is like no other on this planet.
All the tips in this article mean nothing to enjoying what France has to offer. The lakes are beautiful, the people and hosts are sound, the scenery is breathtaking and the waters are truly stunning places to be.
Enjoy every moment of being on the bank in France, the country has an abundance of delights to offer. When you’re there, you’re set up and ready for your session, the fishing just becomes a bonus to how fantastic a place France is for Carp Angling.
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