Autumn on St Christophe 2
By Paul Cooper and Pat Gillett


Now this was to be the last French trip of the year. St Christophe 2 was the destination and it would be the second week of October that Pat and I would set off for the trip. The forecast was not looking to good for the fishing, high pressure all week with daytime temperatures varying from 24 degrees to 10 degrees.

The trip down to Dover was trouble free, but once we hit the other side of the channel there was thick fog. The first few hours of the journey was in darkness and very poor visibility due to the fog, this when the satellite navigation units come into their own.

We arrived at the larger of the 2 St Christophe lakes around 10.30 in the morning to be greeted by Phillip, the lake owner. Over a mug of coffee we had a broken conversation in French and English with Phillip. Phillip showed us the large lake, which is around 35 acres, with most of the swims being occupied with by Dutch anglers.

We jumped back in our car and followed Phillip to St Christophe 2 which is about ½ a mile from the main lake.

We entered the grounds of St Christophe 2 through the secure gates and were surprised by the size of the lake. We were expecting a small compact lake around 2 acres. We were looking at around 3 acres of clear blue water, with the bank on the approach to the lake slowly sloping down to a large double gravelled swim. We were greeted by Phillips partner, Marie who was just finishing the preparation of the gite for our weeks stay.

The Accommodation
Now the difference between the Christophe lakes is obviously size and of course the accommodation at Christophe 2. This is situated on the eastern bank overlooking the lake and is only around 30m from the double swim. The ground floor is an open plan living area with kitchen, dining area and sitting area. Off this area is a shower room with shower, toilet and wash hand basin along with a wall heater.

In the main living area are 2 wall electric radiators.

The kitchen has a microwave, fridge freezer, full working electric oven, and a 2-ringed hob, sink and every kitchen utensil that you could require to cook a full meal.

The upper floor is an attic type conversion with 2 bedrooms with a double bed in each room.

There is a veranda at the front of the gite over looking the lake, which has a table and chairs for the warm evening meals.

Lake
The lake itself has high banks around most of the lake with a few other swims cuts cut out for short stalking sessions. These swims are not big enough or safe enough for long sessions due to the steep banks and deep water. The margin water of the north, west and south banks quickly drop to 3 meters depth only yards from the bank. These gradually drop to around 6 metres in the centre of the lake. The eastern end of the lake has depths of 1 metre to around 3 meters. The margins of the lake are normally covered in lily beds and there is a scattering of a long straddled weed in the deeper water. There are around 100 carp in the lake varying from low doubles to mid forties.

The large double swim

Tactics
The obvious choice of swims was the large double swim in front of the gite. I settled for the left hand side of the lake and Pat the right hand side of the lake. This gave me the choice of the margins of the southern and western margins along with a large section of deeper water to fish and Pat the Northern margins, a large area of shallow water on the eastern bank and again a large section of deeper water.
We spent the first couple of hours plumbing the lake, both of us settling with a couple of margin rods and a couple of deeper water rods.

Following a comfortable night in the gite, we started our campaign at first light on the Sunday morning. Due to the weather conditions we both decided that it would not be wise to initially put too much bait into the lake.

Hemp and Quest Rahja Spice shelf life boilies in 20mil, 15mil and 10 mil baits, was our choice of bait. By Tuesday evening it became quite apparent that we could not get a take on anything bigger than 15mil boilies, and that the fish were only feeding at the base of the margin drop off point in about the 3-meter area. The centre of the lake was abandoned and all our efforts were concentrated on the margins.

The fog dropped by 8pm at night and did not lift until around midday the following morning when the sun broke through and gave bright clear skies.

Pat came to the conclusion that the fish were that finicky that no bait was required at all around his presented bait, which resulted in him picking up a 34lb 10oz common, and a 33lb mirror along with a couple of upper doubles a 24 hour period over the Tuesday and Wednesday. The 33lb mirror again showed itself to Pat on a different baited area 12 hours later.

Pat with the 33lb mirror he caught twice in 12 hours!

34lb 10oz common

I continued to lightly feed one area of the far margins, which paid dividends in the form of the occasional run. By Tuesday the only bait that I was introducing to the swim was either chopped baits or 10 mil boilies along with a small scattering of hemp.

By the end of the week I managed to land a 31lb 8oz common, 2 upper twenties, and 6 mid to upper doubles.

My 31lb 8oz common

27lb 8oz

28lb 12oz

Snowman rig

My end rig consisted of a 3 foot lead core leader with inline 3 ounce pear shaped leads and long hook links made of a combination of 19lb Seaguar fluorocarbon mono and 25lb Mantis with the knotless knot to a size 4 ESP G-4 Raptor hook with a medium length hair. I was using a snowman rig set up with a 10 mil shelf life Rahja Spice boilie topped with a 12 mil pink spicy flavoured pop up and Pat a similar presentation.

This was a hard weeks fishing I am sure that was solely due to the extreme high pressure, fog and cold nights. The other lakes in the area also suffered with the conditions, most producing the 1 fish between 10 anglers per lake.

Typical St Christophe 2 upper double

Conclusion
St Christophe 2 is ideally suited for 2 anglers and their non-fishing partners. The gite accommodation is comfortable, clean, has an excellent range in kitchen facilities. It is close enough to the lake for your partners to relax in comfort of the gite while the angler gets down to the business end of fishing.

Due to it being the latter part of the season that we fished the lake, a lot depends on the weather conditions. The temperatures start to drop, and the fish slow down on their feeding habits, so our results are not a fair conclusion of the potential which the lake can produce.
The lake contains a good head of fish for the acreage, with some much larger specimens than we managed to capture.

Paul Cooper
paulcooperscfc@aol.com