Fishing for Carp near Bergerac

I didn't realise that fishing was such a massive pastime until I moved to France but it is. One of the major things that fishermen have going for them is the space and no shortage of lakes and rivers.

Locally to us there are an awful lot of small irrigation reservoirs which are stocked with large Carp which are introduced to help clean the lakes up.

Recently, the kids and I decided to dust off the old Argos fishing rods and cast our lines out at a reservoir which is owned by Fleur's school friends grandfather.

For those who normally have to jostle for the best swim on the bank it is the perfect scenario because we were the only three there on a lake of about two acres.

After setting up the tackle we didn't have to wait too long before I caught a Carp of about four pounds and shortly afterwards another of a similar size.

Fleur, who was on her first ever fishing excursion caught a two pounder just before we left. Henry though, didn't have much luck and suffered several 'birds nests' tangles.

The bait was the good old dependable sweetcorn but I did have a bit of a bite using bread dough. Not being an expert fishermen though I could not begin to advise on what might be fashionable at the moment - if you know then please feel free to leave a comment below.

We have about four trips behind us now and also enquired at a smaller but deeper lake within five minutes from here where a local I spoke to had about ten small fish that looked like sprats which he said that he would take away to eat.

There are also Crayfish in both lakes and if you look at this rather blurred image you can see one that we caught on our first trip.