France - Les Teillatts

Hi All,

I am off to Les Teillatts in May and wanted to know if anyone has any advice for our approach i.e. bait, location etc.

Thanks,

Hi mate I am a regular at Les Teillatts. Cracking lake if you can get on the fish. The best swims are definatley the ones in the woods ie: biffos and new biffos. Also The Rock and Middle Field on the field bank are a good bet. The past 5 years ive been most of the other swims have produced very little, and ive seen a lot of people blank! its not an easy lake. I went early last year and not many fish were caught. Just 10 fish out of 12 anglers all week! I managed to catch 7 of them and the biggest was an ounce under 50lb. a good tactic is to be mobile, cast around in your swim and dont fish to one spot! Dont be scared to move swim if you are not catching! also use small amounts of bait first of all, for example pva bags with a few pellet and 5 or 6 boilies, until you locate the fish. ive seen it so many times people find a spot, row out and put 10 kilos of bait in. Do get a boat though, as if you get on the fish you can put a lot of bait in to keep them feeding in your part of the lake. the fish do tend to shoal up, and if they do decide to have a munch then they will quickly eat all the bait and move to another part of the lake. The lake does its own boilies called Cross Channels specials, these are ok at best. They smell strongly of the old additive 'Secret agent' and they are shelf life baits so I'd recommend you take your own boilies. There seed mix is ok but unless you have a pan and cooker to boil it in its a bit of a waste of time getting. The pellets are not awesome but do the job and I suppose the carp are used to eating them as you are not allowed to take your own pellets. Baits presented on snowman rigs seem to pick out the bigger fish, so it might be worth you doing two rods on snowmen and two singles.

Remember the lake gets hammered 24/7 for most of the year, so think about it before you start chucking a shed load of bait in. Theres probably bait on the bottom from the last weeks angler. Little pva bags will catch you more fish!

grubs pretty good, full english every morn and a good cooked meal every night.

take plenty of Mozzy repellent!!!


Oh and when it gets dark the frogs and toads are so f***ing loud you will have trouble sleeping!! No joke

hope thats help to you matey

[madcaravanner]

Originally Posted by ShortsJR

Hi mate I am a regular at Les Teillatts. Cracking lake if you can get on the fish.

Baits presented on snowman rigs seem to pick out the bigger fish, so it might be worth you doing two rods on snowmen and two singles.

Oh and when it gets dark the frogs and toads are so f***ing loud you will have trouble sleeping!! No joke

OK got to ask as I'm actually new to serious Carp fishing

What's a Snowman rig ?????

It's not the toads thats as noisy as the Frogs -- you can se why the French eat 'em to cut the noise down
the place where I go (Welcome to Twin Lakes Caravan Park, Charente Maritime, France) has Natterjacks everywhere

A snowman rig is basically a normal hair rig but with a longer hair, long enough for two boilies instead of one. What you do is put a normal bottom bait on the hair FIRST, then you put a pop up boilie on aswell. This creates a bait the is neutrally ballanced. Basically this means that the bouyancy of the pop up boilie counter acts with the normal boilie making it not so heavy. So now you have a bait which is going to fly into the carps mouth as soon as it sucks near the bait. I use orange coloured tutti frutti pop ups when i fish there. they seem to work pretty well

Also the bottom of the lake is mainly sand and a light coloured clay with the odd weed bed and gravel bar here and there. So go for a light coloured braided hook link, or even better use the new Korda IQ hooklink

If you get on the fish and they fish are really going for it catching a few like this possible. This one was 49lb 14oz caught on a Snowman rig and a small pva bag of pellets and crushed boilies. There are 8 different 70lb plus carp in Les Teillatts, also cats to over 120lb!

[madcaravanner]

Originally Posted by ShortsJR

A snowman rig is basically a normal hair rig but with a longer hair, long enough for two boilies instead of one. What you do is put a normal bottom bait on the hair FIRST, then you put a pop up boilie on aswell. This creates a bait the is neutrally ballanced. Basically this means that the bouyancy of the pop up boilie counter acts with the normal boilie making it not so heavy. So now you have a bait which is going to fly into the carps mouth as soon as it sucks near the bait. I use orange coloured tutti frutti pop ups when i fish there. they seem to work pretty well

Now I get the picture been using the same rig but didn't know it had a name

Also the bottom of the lake is mainly sand and a light coloured clay with the odd weed bed and gravel bar here and there. So go for a light coloured braided hook link, or even better use the new Korda IQ hooklink

I personally do not use braid seen too many fish damaged by in experienced anglers using it

I may one day when I've caught a few hundred more carp but until then

This is my PB from Gran Canaria 41lb 5oz and on mono filament too

Same as me mate, I've never really done very well using braided hooklinks anyway. The past season ive been using Korda IQ flurocarbon hooklinks and never looked back. Such a subtle type of flurocarbon and not twangy and stiff like most other brands & knot strength isvery good. I recommend it.

Nice mirror there Ive not been fishing in Gran Canaria myself.