My first trip to France for 6 years, we headed off to Bounty Lakes. We arrived Saturday lunch time, having been awake since Friday morning so the first job was to get set up. While setting up I got 3 kilos of the Natural Maple+ in some glug and started to air dry the Antarctic Red. A kilo or so of each was also put in to start washing out. I didn’t really plan on putting the rods out until the evening but after it being baking hot a strong wind came in and I just couldn’t resist. I stuck out 3 baits with small bags of pellet. The Natural Maple was away really quickly and resulted in 10 fish on the first day/night. At one point i had one in a sling, 2 in nets and another one being photographed. Come the morning, house particle was picked up and more mixed boilies were added in. Spots were found properly and the throwing stick came out and it wasn’t long before the first 30 was in the net. By Monday the weather had changed again, the wind swung round and the temp went up by 10 degrees. Bites suddenly became hard to come by and it looked like the fish had moved off, but I kept at it with the throwing stick, twice a day making sure bait was there for when they turned up. And the Tuesday evening they did. Within an hour and a half of dinner 7 fish had been netted including another 30. Feeling really confident I was looking forward to a sleepless night…. and then slept 10 hours solid 🤦♂️ so I decided to stick a cat rod out – 4 22mm halibut pellets with a Tutti Frutti pop-up at the end, a boat load of house pellet and a few handfuls of AR. Mid afternoon it ripped away and I was in to a solid cat, then disaster, the knot on my hook link gave. Carp carried on coming out over night and by Thursday morning I’d landed 30 carp including 3 x 30s, but still the real big girls evaded us. Back out with the cat rod, this time a much improved knot with a dash of super glue. What happened next can only be described as complete chaos. I sat there and watched the bobbin lift, but no line was being taken, next thing I see the backlead out of the water and before I could even think ‘buckle up’ melt down occurred. After 15 minutes the beast had decided it wanted to hide in the reeds, so I attempt to walk out to it, but before I can get round the edge of the reeds I’m neck deep. Plan b, get the boat and get to the fish, after a short row round the corner I get to the line, lift it up and a huge mouth comes out. I knew it was going to be a personal best so was even more determined to land it. Lifting the line up the damn thing ends up being longer than the boat, I get a tow back in while holding the hooklink. Battle done, fish banked, weighing in at 115lb. One happy, wet and slimy angler. It looked like I was basically done for the carp now after dropping the only take I had in the evening. But as I drifted off, about half 11 one of the rods rips off, a trusty trimmed down AR wafter over the house particle with the mixed boilies doing the damage. Fish in, rod back out, walk in to the bivvy, bang, it goes off again, this carried on until 4am when I chickened out and just cast a single. Friday has a weather change and the heavens are open most of the morning, but as soon as it’s stops I had a few in quick succession, quite often one in the sling and another in the net. Racked up 30lber number 4 as I got to 40 carp by early afternoon – Then silent rods again. Just before bed I had a hook pull and was gutted thinking that would be how the trip ends. I got into bed in a bit of a sulk, then at half 12 the trimmed down AR wafter over particle was away again, 19.08lbs, not bad, but I didn’t want to end up on pest control so the rod went back out. Before I even managed to get in to the bivvy it was away, I was convinced it was a catfish, I struggled to slow it down, eventually it started to kite and I started to relax, until my brain kicked in and realised if it pulled that hard to start with it had to be bigger than anything else I’d had this week. A few minutes later it’s in the net, I’m weighing it, and it’s going 39.06lb, so close to the 40lb mark, but one hell of a way to finish the week. That was time to reel in and get some kip before the morning pack down.
