October and November can be superb months for catching big carp, all my own biggest catches of carp and biggest weights have come at this time of year. So it is a time of year that I try to fish as much as I can and if possible sneak a trip in over the channel.

5 of us made the 4hr trip to Vaumigny, just south of Paris. My son Jake and my friend Matt from Invicta Angling, my brother Colin and his friend Brian. Vaumigny is a mature 30 acre gravel pit, made up of lovely overhanging tree lined margins, gravel bars and one long island down one end. We had booked 5 swims in a line but after a chat about who was fishing where we decided on Matt fishing alone in the first swim this gave him a nice point to cast across to at the end of the lake, next I doubled up with Jake, we then left a blank swim with Colin and Brian doubled up in the next with the remaining blank swim the other side of them. The distance between swims was around 60/80 yrds giving us all plenty of room.

The lake is well stocked with carp to 60lb as well as plenty of Sturgeon that go to the French record of 90lb and Catfish that have been caught at 150lb.

By Saturday afternoon we were all settled in with the rods out. A Dutch angler who had fished the previous week came round to see us and informed us that over the past week the water temp had dropped 5 degrees, now for those of you that do not study the effects of water temperatures I can tell you that this is a massive drop and would undoubtedly have an impact on the fishing.

Saturday evening Matt gave me a call, he just landed a 30lb mirror so was off the mark. By Sunday morning Brian had also caught a 27lb mirror. Brian and Colin had both landed a couple of sturgeon each. It seemed the way to catch these prehistoric looking fish was to use pellets. Now I wasn’t too keen on catching them myself as I really just wanted carp so I fished boilies. I started by fishing over a bit of particle. With the French being fans of maize the Sonu tins of Hemp n Giant Maize seemed the ideal choice so I spodded a tin a day for the first few days on to a nice little gravel bar I had found at a comfortable 70 yrds. I also used a throwing stick to scatter a kilo of boilie in a larger area around the particle. The idea being to fish boilies on all three rods one on the particle and the other rods either side of it. This way you should get a feel for what the carp wanted to feed over. Now Jake didn’t mind what he caught , so we set him up to try to catch anything that was around. On his side of the swim at 30 yrds was a nice gravel seam that felt hard and fed over, it was also just within catapult range for some 12mm Sonu Elliptical pellets that we had. So Jake spread a kilo bag of pellets along the bar and fished two rods on this area with a 15mm Sonu crab n crayfish boilie on the hair with an attached stocking of 6mm Sonu Ellipticals. Sure enough it wasn’t long before he started getting liners as fish moved along the bar, eventually the take came and after a spirited fight he had his first ever sturgeon at 28lb.

Over the course of the week Jake managed several more sturgeon. Matt managed to catch one or two carp a day, all around the 30lb mark by bait boating his bait out to nice overhanging tree on the far margin with just a handful of Sonu Hemp n Tigers for feed with a balanced nut out of the tin as hookbait. With the boat keeping everything nice and tight and with just a mouthful of freebies it certainly seemed the correct method.

Both myself and Colin had managed a few carp with Colin catching a cracking 38lb common, I had had a few sturgeon also to 46lb.

By Friday Jake was still without a Carp. During the week every time I walked down to see Colin and Brian I stood for a few minutes in the empty swim between us. It seemed to me that the water here looked a little more coloured than in my swim, I put this down to the bank being steeper with a sheer drop as opposed to my swim where the margins were shallow. I don’t know why, perhaps a sixth sense from years of carping, but Friday afternoon I said to Jake lets go and have a look in the blank swim. I asked if he thought the water looked coloured, he said it was the depth. With that a carp stuck its head out. Now considering we hadn’t seen a thing all week this was indeed too good to miss. I said to Jake to come and sit down here for a few hours into dark, so we grabbed a chair, a net and his two rods. No pellets this time to avoid the sturgeon, just a stocking of whole boilies attached to the hook and a scattering of freebies. Both baits were dropped in the margins either side of the swim. An hour later I hear a call and run down to find Jake in a margin tussle with what looks like a good fish, sure enough its a carp and a right football of a 33lb mirror.

Apparently whilst sitting there he had seen several other shows, those carp had found the one quiet unfished spot on the lake that due to the layout of the swims we had just not seen them. A couple of hours later he lost another which snagged him and shed the hook on some old line hanging from a tree. So he came back to our main swim for the night very pleased. I said to Jake that was a massive lesson, one hour in the right place is worth a week in the wrong place. Friday night, our last before a 10am departure on Saturday morning I managed my best carp of the week at 32lb

And at 6am with just 4 hours to go Colin had a lovely 46lb mirror.

Matt finished the week with several 30s, Brian with just the one carp on that opening night, but he did turn out to be the sturgeon master and happily fished for them and caught regularly with a number over 40lb.

The drop in temperature really did ruin the fishing, we did well all thing considered. The several Dutch guys opposite us all blanked and in fact went home a day early. But that’s the chance you take at this time of year.