Hatterbarbel , diary of an average angler: France , our holiday .

After an awesome stag do trip to France last year with James and my mates I was very keen to get back this year . I wanted sue to come , as I wanted it as more of a holiday than out and out fishing . I chose the lake because I did not want to go in a draw for swims with strangers !, you could end up fishing where you don't want , next to possibly a mad axe man !, well you know what I mean , so needed to book a swim .Also I wanted somewhere with a good food package , and quite a way south to catch the summer still in late September . After checking out a few places I went for Entang Brigueuil , booked a good average swim for the time of year , and with the train booked all we had to do was wait 10 months . Lots happened in that 10 months , we gained a new granddaughter called Nellie , and a pony called Bramble ,who unbeknown to us was carrying a foal !. This led to very hard work and busy times for Sue !, and in May the new addition popped out , Cooper came along . Now , this would not normally mater in one of my fishing tales , but he bloody did , because 2 weeks before we were due to leave Sue caught an accidental kick in the jaw from him !. Her teeth were damaged , and had a longitudinal fracture of the jaw bone !. This led to Sue taking her own home cooked food with her , soft stuff to give her jaw the time to heal . So part of my plan of having nice meals delivered to the swim went out the window !, well for Sue it did anyway .

Cooper , named because Gary Cooper ( yes , film star )came from our town.

We left in the early hours of a Saturday morning , heading down to the Chanel tunnel . Sue was impressed with the whole setup , we boarded the train and 30 mins later we jumped on a motorway driving on the wrong side of the road . The drive through France was a bloody pleasure , empty roads ,and Sue got the hang of the toll charge machines . We stopped a few times , even to look at a barbel river , 8 hours into France we pulled up at the lake to be greeted by Andy and Tracy late afternoon . The swim we had booked had fished very slow the week before , in fact blanked !, so we took the opportunity to move to the opposite side of the lake where some English lads had caught the week before , and what a really fantastic swim it was . Full of Lilly pads , and at the shallower end of the lake we settled in putting up the bivvy , sue getting it all ready while I just chucked the rods out as it got dark on pva bags .

Pads , casting to the far bank .

The weather was fine all week , in fact nice and sunny , with dewy morning this must rolling off the water , fantastic . I was fishing towards banks of pads , fishing into gaps , for a few days I fished like a twat , not accurately enough , and a nice message from the English lads who I chatted to on Facebook kicked me up the arse to try harder !. They had been using a bait boat , and were baiting and dropping rigs really accurately , the only way I could repulcate that was to borrow Andy's waders , walk along the margins , and nicely cast the pva bag rigs into the little gaps !. It worked perfect fist time , all three rods were right on the money , and during the night two of them rattled off . Andy walked into the swim the next morning with my full English french stick brekkie , and was a bit disappointed at the sizes , best being a mid twenty common , but as I said getting the bite is the main thing , you can't really help what fish picks the bait up !.

One of many mid twenty commons

A couple of things become obvious though . First , Andys waders had a nice leak !, and the first trip out see me come back wet from the arse down !!. In the end the best thing I found was to go naked !, still wearing the waders , but stripping off saved on drying the clothes !. Obviously at night it was not feasible to do this , although in the dark I did try to sort out if there was a way , but in the end gave up on the idea . Secondly just banging a bait out into the dark , even in a clip , was not good enough to get in the little bays that I had baited up !. So basically if I had a take on a rod it was almost certainly game over for that rod , although it was cast as good as I could in the dark !. Some of the takes were fantastic , with clutches tightened up so only just give line , we knew we had to get to the rods quick . One of the bites see the rod bounce clear and drop back onto the Delkim alarm with just one bleep !, we even had the pod pulled over which lit up the swim with all the alarms screaming and bobbins glowing !.

Nice scaly linears in there .

We had a couple of trips into the local town , nice place . It was nice seeing Sue speaking French in the shops , buying fags and lovely quiche in the patisserie , we even got the grand kids little pressys from the hypermarket .The weather was great all week , with an awesome electrical storm one night . Sue cooked her food , producing lovely meals for her , certainly not roughing it . The big fox euro bivvy I got on eBay was perfect for the job , we slept really well in comfort , with most nights seeing us watching a few editions of Downton Abbey on the Ipad , watching 20 of them over the week !, and more than once I knocked it over crashing into the night as one single bleep from the buzzer meant it was action time !.

Luxury apartment !.

The sunsets were perfect every night , blazing red , leaving star filled sky's as we sat drinking coffee in the dark.

The fishing on the lake was tough all week , but after getting my arse in gear we had 12 takes , 9 fish landed, lost 3 fish , at least one of which is why you go to France !. I felt a bit unlucky with that one , I played it back from the far pads passing two places where it could of snagged me only for it to fall off just in front of us .The deep plodding , head shaking , big water movements was of one of the bigger fish the lake holds , but that's life . I had 3 mid twenty commons in succession , lovely long fish that went mental . The best fish was a mid thirty mirror that gave it the beans to the net , but my favourite fish came on the last full day . Down to my right was a tree laying in shallow water , with a snaggy bay beyond it . During my naked wading sessions I realised it was deeper by the tree than first thought , and I walked a rod down there and layer a tigernut rig with a handful of nuts around it , sneaky stuff . On that misty morning we decided to go to the shops , we had eaten breakfast , but felt a bite was on the cards and was giving it another half hour . Sue had complained all week that the tight clutches had meant that we had not had a proper screaming run on the buzzers , but that rod was on a slack clutch , and as we sat in the chairs with the warm morning sun on our faces a fish put that right !. Only a small fish melted the Delkim , it really made us jump , and Sue got her wish .

Misty dawns

The week flew past , it really did , and I left the rods out until the last seconds before Andy loaded it into the quad bike trailer . I could have easily stayed another week , but we packed up the car , and headed to the house for our last brekkie roll . Andy and Tracy were disappointed with the size of fished , but as Iv said you can't choose which ones pick up the bait , it could have easily been the odd 40, or 50 lb fish in amongst the 20,s and 30,s we were catching .