I have just come back from an interesting weeks fishing with Paul Cooper on the Angling Lines Venue, Island Lake.
Island Lake is a mature looking Gravel Pit of approximately 25 acres in the Champagne Region of France; roughly 3 ¾ hours drive from Calais. As the name suggests it has a large island and 4 or 5 bays along with a lot of weed and underwater features.
The lake is totally different to most commercial French fisheries as it is relatively lightly stocked for the size of the venue. Most commercial French Lakes are overstocked and so the fish become virtually dependant on anglers’ baits, which more or less guarantees you catching plenty of fish. The fish in Island Lake are of an excellent average size and it would appear that they have reached and are maintaining these weights by feeding on the abundance of natural food in the lake. This can lead to very challenging fishing, but to me this makes it all the more interesting and rewarding. (more…)
So, how do we arrive at the final recipe the finished bait and what sort of testing do we actually do?
This is such a frequently asked question that I thought I should perhaps answer everyone.
Many of the baits in the Quest Baits range have a very long history to them – certainly a lot longer than Quest has been around. Baits like ‘Fruity Trifle’ have been part of my personal armoury since the late 80’s with just the odd tweak here and there as new ingredients have come to light which I feel are better than some of the ones I used in the original basemix form. But there are also the boilies such as Liver B8 which I have worked on since the formation of Quest Baits.
The Liver B8 was a bait I always wanted to do – total meat based with no fish. It was a case of finding the right ingredients. The actual bait had been in my head for years but it took a long while to track down the ingredients I wanted.
Everyone knows the effectiveness of liver products in baits. Carp love the taste of liver but how many of you are aware of the type of liver you are using? Does your bait have pigs liver in it, cows liver perhaps, chicken liver, lambs liver – the list goes on.
Whenever I cast out any rig I want to be confident it doesn’t tangle and that when it settles on the bottom the hook isn’t masked by any weed or bottom debris. I almost always mask the hook with either PVA tape or PVA foam or both. Trapping the hair at the same time definitely also prevents tangles. In the photo you can see two set ups that I use for 90% of my fishing.
I use the Extra Wide 20mm PVA tape from Kryston and PVA foam nuggets from SolarTackle. I would be totally lost without these products, both of which melt completely and never leave any residue at all.
In the first picture the rig on the left is a simple single bottom bait. In this case the hook is masked with a few turns of extra wide PVA tape which has been licked a bit to make it neat and compact - as you can see the hair is trapped at the same time. This is also a good set up for distance fishing.
Paul Bedford wrote:
Hi, I am going to Jonchery in August ‘08 and I’m just wondering what flavourboilies and pellets you would recommend to take as I have never fished in France.
Thanks very much
Paul
Shaun Harrison replies:
Hi Paul,
I haven’t fished Jonchery but have seen the lake. Certainly if I were going myself I would take either Liver B8 boilies or the Special Crab (or both) at that time of the year and back them up with the GarlicFeastparticlemix. (more…)
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