River fishing in France

[chesilpete]

Love these reports.. great fishing.

 

[Trampster]

Great report and photos Steve. It's the time of year when hopefully, things can only improve.

 

[Cwab]

Enjoy your reports and healthy looking wild fish from a clean looking river and interesting location, thanks for posting yet again!
Out of interest are there pike in your area or perch?

 

[Steve Arnold]

Enjoy your reports and healthy looking wild fish from a clean looking river and interesting location, thanks for posting yet again!
Out of interest are there pike in your area or perch?

The river Lot is quite famous for its predator fishing, unfortunately I see little sign of pike! There are perch, zander and catfish (silure) in reasonable numbers, the zander and silure grow to very good sizes. But although I see the pike anglers chucking lures I have only seen quite small pike being caught and not that many!
The lower end of the river Lot is deeper, slower and early winter fishing with lures can get good catches of zander. If I was younger and still had a boat and trailer I would have tried that, the videos I have seen on YouTube make it look just my thing, I used to do a lot of boat fishing with lures back in Scotland.
One of the local lure anglers was talking to me a few weeks ago, he had caught and returned a good zander but was bemoaning the lack of pike. I have a theory that the pike(their habit of lying stationary close to the bank) are easy targets for a big silure, the increasing numbers of silure may be a cause of the decline in pike fishing.

 

[Cwab]

The river Lot is quite famous for its predator fishing, unfortunately I see little sign of pike! There are perch, zander and catfish (silure) in reasonable numbers, the zander and silure grow to very good sizes. But although I see the pike anglers chucking lures I have only seen quite small pike being caught and not that many!
The lower end of the river Lot is deeper, slower and early winter fishing with lures can get good catches of zander. If I was younger and still had a boat and trailer I would have tried that, the videos I have seen on YouTube make it look just my thing, I used to do a lot of boat fishing with lures back in Scotland.
One of the local lure anglers was talking to me a few weeks ago, he had caught and returned a good zander but was bemoaning the lack of pike. I have a theory that the pike(their habit of lying stationary close to the bank) are easy targets for a big silure, the increasing numbers of silure may be a cause of the decline in pike fishing.

Thanks very interesting stuff and local river you have to enjoy, bet those silures could be a pain if not fishing for them and got hold of one. Great to see some healthy looking examples of fish that you encounter.

 

[richtic]

Great reports and fishing, well done @Steve Arnold

 

[Paulthecod]

Very interesting thread this one!