Woods Lake - March 2nd to March 5th 2002

by Dave Wilshaw & Steve Kilgannon

We had quite a long journey down to the 8am ferry from Dover. Leaving Birmingham at 1am we were very excited about the prospect of a great weeks fishing at Woods Lake. Once in France the miles (sorry kilometres) seemed to fly by and we we're like a group of school children with the excitement. The directions were simple to follow (if we didn't get lost no one will!). The nearest town is Vitry-le-Francois and up until that point we hadn't even looked at the map more than once or twice. If you follow the directions given you may have a problem or 2 at this point. The main road into the town simply vanishes into a town square. After some directions from a kindly shopkeeper were totally ignored we were soon back out on the road towards St. Dizier.  2 nd turnoff on the right and we were almost there. With a rather barren landscape we were looking for the lake when we got a shout from Jean-Claude (the bailiff) from his front door step. He then got us to follow him to the lakeside. As it turned out it was only a couple of hundred yards further on anyway. Since we don't speak French we were rather relieved that he spoke English (if not fluent then at least very understandable).

The lake looked pretty bleak with bare branches on all the trees and bushes. We had a walk around the lake (at least the side you can fish from (see diagram)) and picked our swims. Our choice of swim was very limited, as we had to try and fish through the tree line and not from the tree line. We were told by Jean-Claude that the lake had about 1 metre of water on top of its usual levels and this was fairly evident from the tree line in the water. The day we arrived was very windy and we were very eager to get our bivvies set up, rods out and have a bit of a rest. Even allowing for Steve forgetting his Quattro pod and all his alarms it didn't take us long to get fishing The ground was a little on the muddy side but we expected that from previous trips at this time of year.

On previous trips to France we had found that the winning tactic had been to 'pile the bait in', but after reading up in several magazines we had decided, to at least start off, with a gentler approach. That first night we simply put out a couple of spods full of particle mix and on a 'margin' rod I threw a handful of pellets out as well. After adjusting the rod rest positioning a few times, to stop the wind and submerged branches causing almost non-stop bleeps, we settled in for a well-earned rest. It took a while to get to sleep with the anticipation but after 14 hours travelling there was no chance of staying up for too long.

It turned out to be a full and undisturbed nights sleep for all 3 of us and at 6.30am we started peering out from our bivvies to find a VERY heavy frost over the rods and all gear outside. It had been minus 8°c that night and anyone who has had a similar experience will know what that does to your confidence (at least for a few hours). However the frost had all gone inside a couple of hours and after a quick discussion about the lack of fish showing we set about re-casting and baiting our swims. Baiting slightly heavier this time we put out a fair spread of different rigs. Bottom baits, pop ups, combi rigs, hinged rigs and stiff rigs. Once again though, the wind was quite strong and there were no fish showing at all.

With another re-casting of all rods latter in the day we settled down to a peaceful night. Not a sausage !!  Apart that is, from the ones we cooked for breakfast!!  The next day we we're starting to panic slightly. Not so much at not having caught anything (some waters can be harder than others etc..) but there was no sight of any fish at all. A change of tactic and we started to pile the bait in the hopes of starting any fish sulking around the bottom to feed. After scrapping the bottoms of our bait buckets for various dips and soaks we set out for the night having put quite a lot of bait out.

3 pegs, 4 rods each, 3 days and not a bleep to show for it. The next morning however the wind had dropped almost totally and we found the swims were even more under water than we had at first thought. In front of each swim there were the stubby winter remains of reed beds and bushes under the water. Now without the wind the clear waters had revealed that even if we had hooked a fish we had no chance whatsoever of landing it. After a discussion with Jean-Claude about this he allowed us to move over to nearby La Traque (which was empty), as this at least was fishable for the last 4 days of our trip.

Click here to see how we got on.

Woods Lake looked as though it would be very pretty with a bit more of the tree cover grown out and the water level dropped. After talking at length to Jean-Claude about Woods it became apparent that this is a heavily stocked lake with Carp running to around the 40lb mark with Koi running into the mid twenties. Jean-Claude told us that there was also large numbers of Catfish apparent, the bigger ones going 100lb plus. He had been involved with the stocking of these so we knew the information to be reliable and correct.

Although we had endured some of the worst fishing conditions known to man, Woods is an exciting prospect, features are in abundance with the island being the main attraction. Under more obliging conditions this lake could throw up a catch of a lifetime!! Due to the lakes size the fishing could be relatively easy, a 50 yard cast or so will enable you to fish tight to the majority of the island swims. We are in the process of booking a return fixture in early June to hopefully do battle with the large carp and monstrous catfish, which inhabit this lake. Hopefully we will have more tales to tell then..we will be back and you can read all about it here !!!