We pride ourselves on being honest about our fish stock.
After settling in to life in France for a year or so we decided it was time to sort out the lakes and start building our property into a proper carp fishery.
The previous owner was extremely proud of what he had created and especially proud of the “Royal” carp which he bred and sold every 2 years when he drained the lake.
When we drained the main lake we found that he left us with around 100 small, young “Royals” and around 100 “Table fish” (carp bred purely for food) other species included, Tench, Perch, Roach, Rudd, Gudgeon and Pike.
We removed all the table fish and left everything else behind and then started our hunt for more carp to complement the existing Royals. Before we had even made an enquiry we had a visit from a member of our commune asking if we wanted to buy any fish, after a bit of haggling we ended up with 22 Royals, mainly commons, between 18lb and 22lb. We then contacted a fish farmer from somewhere near Bordeaux and bought around 30 young, (around 10lb) pretty carp which from memory were a Hungarian strain. The following season we went to a local drain down where we met another local Frenchman who did a bit of fish farming and he supplied us with 24 carp ranging from upper doubles to the biggest at 33lbs.
Our stocking was completed by 2007 and the lake contained around 180 carp. We didn’t open in 2007 to allow the fish time to settle in and then slowly built up to being fully booked by 2011.
Once angling started it was obvious the fish were growing well so we started to thin the stock to keep the bio mass at a level where the better fish had the space to reach their full potential. Over the years I would guess that we’d be surprized at how many fish we’ve removed but this must be the reason we’ve been able to grow such big fish in a short time and also the reason we have some stunning younger fish coming through which have been bred in the lake since we’ve owned it.
We now have no real idea of how many carp we actually have, during the winter I’m going to try and find time to go over this year’s photo’s (2011) and catch reports to get a better idea. I can say that we have at least 10 different fish over 50lbs the biggest being 64lb 8oz and would guess that we have in excess of 35 over 40, several of which are 48lb+
What’s on the cards for the future?
Obviously it’s impossible to say but if previous years are anything to go by, the carp are going to be considerably bigger and even harder to catch. We had always planned that Echo Pool was going to be a challenging water with big rewards, I think we can safely say we have succeeded.
See fish gallery for more photo's