Keith tells the story of the huge French fish in his own words:
“At the start of the week the weather did not look good with cold temperatures at night and sunny during the days with a cold northerly wind blowing.
I was fishing swim one on the lake, where the water is deeper and it’s an area I know really well. The previous week this part of the lake was very pressured with four anglers putting lot of lines out so I started off feeding slowly and on the first night I only had a few liners but a few fish came out on the opposite side of the lake.
The following night (Monday) brought a hard frost but I knew on Tuesday the weather was forecast to change so I persevered and on Tuesday morning my right hand rod gave two bleeps, with the rod tip just moving, so I struck and landed my first fish of 37 lb 10 oz. It was another 24 hours before I had another very small indication that resulted in a 4lb mirror.
The Following day I had mirrors of 34lb and 40lb but indication was really not what I expected so I increased the weight on my indicators hoping to show more positive takes.
Feeding Mainline hybrid boilies in 14mm and 10mm sizes and with low pressure moving in I increased my feeding on the Wednesday night. On Thursday temperatures hit 30c but cloud and rain was moving in so I was confident the carp were going to feed in a more confident manner and sure enough I started to have a few twenties.
As the rain eased my right hand rod gave me a good, positive run and at first the carp did not really move so I thought it was another twenty. When it did get going it swam under a tree to the left hand side of me and I started to put a bit more pressure on it and within ten minutes the water boiled and my friend said, “It’s massive be careful!”
Even then I thought it was perhaps a high forty but then it turned and we could see it was ‘the big girl.’ Just how big became apparent when I tried to lift it in the landing and nearly fell in the water with the weight of her! The fish was weighed in and witnessed with the assistance of Angling Technics’ Phil Fry and registered 73lb; it was caught on a blowback rig using the Taska new baseline aligners and a baseline tungsten 6mm bead placed an inch from a FangX size 7 barbless hook to a Missing Link hooklength with a 14mm Mainline boilie tipped with a third of a 10mm pineapple boilie.
So far this year in France I have now had 19 carp over 40lb topped by this new personal best from a lake that is special to me.”
