Island Lake in France is about 20 acres in size and has its own unique shape about it and, as the name suggests, there is a large well situated island.

Sam and 44lb 12oz carp
Sam and her 44.12 carp

When we first arrived at the lake we took the usual walk around it to get our bearings and pick that all important swim to set up in. Within ten minutes of being there we had already witnessed a couple of fish crashing towards the middle of the lake.

We chose our features to fish towards and carefully cast our rods out with great expectations. This wasn’t very productive and didn’t achieve any instant results so we sat and watched the water and with all theories and methods being discussed.

A couple of hours later when the sun was really beginning to warm everything up we noticed a small group of what looked like 40+lb carp cruising around the bay next to us. Not wanting to spook them off we quickly loaded the baitboat up with some broken Fruity Trifle boilies and placed two lines very close to them. We then watched intently, waiting for that take, which to my amazement came only about an hour later.

Sam and 42lb 8oz carp
Sam and her 42.8 carp

There was what can only be described as an awesome fight and a 40lb 8oz mirror was in the net.

This really put our hopes up for what promised to be an excellent week to come. The following night a 44lb 12oz mirror was landed from the same spot.

Our bait choice for the week was Quest Baits shelf life Liver B8, Fruity Trifle and Special Crab boilies fished over a bed of Maximum Action Pellets. We found this combination worked well and we didn’t have too much trouble with the Poisson Chat or crayfish whilst using them. Our holiday was arranged by Angling Lines.