Good Evening.

Now on normal occasions I don’t reel in my rods in the morning to check on my baits, but with the growing attacks from the crayfish, today I deemed it necessary to see how the mesh is coping. There is nothing worse than reeling in after a couple of days and finding no bait on any of your rods and as I am fishing very close in, it does not take long to redo the rods anyway. Yesterday I explained I had been meshing my baits and I showed you how if you have not done this procedure before. Lee has also been using protecting his baits with shrink tube. He has noticed some mornings that the shrink tube has actually been hollowed out. These crayfish sure are determined creatures. I tried some of my tougher shrink tube at Windy bay and also had the same happen to me. What did I find this morning then, when I reeled in?

As you can see from the above picture the problem here is pretty serious and it is the large signal crayfish that are most likely responsible, although there is a German lad fishing opposite by the name of Jonah and he spotted a black variety the other day which he estimated was about 35cm long…now that’s lobster size!

The likeable Jonah popped over this afternoon for a chat and he bought with him a useful piece of kit; a crayfish pot! I really must get one. This clever netting device has two non return valves or holes that the  crayfish enter through to eat the bait you place inside. Once in, they can’t escape!! What do you do with the caught crayfish? Boil them and eat them of course and that’s exactly what I will be having for my lunch tomorrow. He caught 30 good sized crayfish yesterday in just 12 hours, so with my pot being out for a good 16, I reckon I could be in for a small feast tomorrow! It certainly is one way to deal with them!

I recast the rods this morning after my check and applied more bait to my four areas. Only a little and I have been priming my spots at regular intervals, so there is always bait there should any carp arrive. Last night several carp were heard in the vicinity and we have all had a chat about this today and have come to the conclusion that they are just not feeding. Not on boilies anyway. There is a guy called Hugo fishing in the bay and he has had a few carp on tiger nuts over the last 10 days and with the Dutch guys round the corner having a few also on tigers. It was time to join the party. Lee has some in his van and he has switched to them on all his rods, so I grabbed a couple of scoops and followed suit. I still have boilies on two rods, but only the bright visible pop-ups as these seem to get left alone a little more by the crays. At the end of the day I am here to try to catch some carp and if the boilies aren’t working, it is time to be realistic and go with the flow. I don’t think the tigers will be a miracle cure, but they certainly may help to get a run or two.

The other question I now have to ask myself; is how much longer do I give Salagou? I have nearly been here two weeks and do I wait another week or move on? I could stay on and end up catching a carp in a week which may only be a small one or I admit defeat and walk away and start a new chapter at another water. My desire is growing to catch a big carp by the minute and if it isn’t going to happen here it may as well be somewhere else. I know Lee is considering throwing in the towel after also having no success after the move, but at least he had four commons from Windy bay.

One nice observation I made today from my swim was a local PE lesson. I envy the children in France as the education system really do seem to have the recreational side of things sorted for children in schools.

And finally after posting my photos yesterday, an aquaintance by the name of Craig commented that the picture of me with the mesh over my head looked like a clip from the creepy film ‘The Others’. This is very amusing as I thought just that when I posted it and also took the picture with my remote set up. I don’t know…the fun you can have on your own with a camera and a remote control! Well this is just for you Craig!

Cheers.

Jake Langley-Hobbs & two Doberman dogs!
Team Imperial Fishing-We love to fish!!…..
www.carp-gps.com

 

Tags: boilies, crayfish, jake langley-hobbs, tiger nuts

This entry was posted on June 12, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under Salagou. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.