There are some French carp lakes which blatantly lie on their websites and advertising, They over inflate their stock levels and state unrealistic lake records and then don’t have photos to back up their claims !!!
Echo Pool is NOT one of these venues.
There are a lot of honest hard working French lakes who state fact not fiction and our lives are made more difficult trying to compete with these other venues that see nothing wrong with lying.
These days it seems like there’s a new French carp lake opening daily and the choice for the English carp angler is almost endless and a potential minefield.
We have been amazed at some of the stories we have been told by our anglers regarding other French fisheries, everything from 8 anglers being squeezed onto a lake of less than 2 acres, violent, drunken owners abusing their clients and the most common of all; impossible fishing situations and inaccurate stock levels especially the lakes which advertise “uncaught original stock”.
“Original stock” will undoubtedly be mostly made up of what are known as “table fish” these carp originate from a strain bred back in the day by monks as a food source and are very unlikely to ever grow more than 25lbs. They are easy to spot because of their long lean shape sometimes referred to as “torpedos”.
We also keep seeing advertising were lake’s are constantly adding stock. In most cases if the lake is working properly and it has a decent head of good quality carp this is not necessary and in fact here at Echo Pool we are constantly removing carp to allow space for our best fish to grow to their full potential.
We bought Echo pool in 2004 and have spent a lot of time and money building it into the fishery it is today, we now consider ourselves to be one of the best exclusive venues in France.
At Echo Pool we have a very good idea of what our stock is and are honest about it, the last thing we want are anglers turning up and getting the hump because we’re not what we say we are.
We have tried to create a balanced, natural lake and think we are almost there, we have carp from 3lb to 60lb, an average fish is now pushing 40lbs. We do not have a load of “stockies” all around the same weight. Every time your alarm sounds you’ll have no idea what you’re about to pull into, chances are it will be between 30 and 50lbs but there is also the chance of it being a small fish or a fish of a lifetime. I think our catch reports speak for themselves.
Because we are trying to keep our water as natural as possible there are other species of fish in the lake. There are no Bream or Poisson chat but there are roach, dace etc and we do have a small number of European Cray fish but they are not a problem, in fact they are a positive because they are such a good food source for our carp.
We do not have any weed and since we’ve owned the property the water level has never dropped even during the hottest summers.