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ALAN TAYLOR'S BLOG Posted by Alan Taylor

Mainline carper, Alan Taylor gives his run down on a recent trip to Rainbow Lake in France...

The island is just that a small strip of land in the middle of the lake, with a big bit of water that is yours to fish, with the usual woodwork type areas, small bays, humps bumps and spits and lots of open water that can be used by the carp when they are just passing through. There are endless places to place baits. It would seem that the carp were waiting to spawn, but the strong northeasterly wind was chilling the water enough to stop this happening. I am fishing the right hand side of the swim and my fishing partner (WC) that is yet to arrive by plane and car (total journey from house to lake five hours!) will be on the left. The two best rods for the right hand swim are normally fished at long range 250-265 yards that will be fun in this strong gusting wind. Lots of options for my other two rods, and I will hope to get something going at a lot shorter range.

I am going to fish with floats and heavy leads to keep the braided main line on the surface out of the way of obstructions and the shallow bars that come to within 2-3 foot of the surface. The heavy leads also helping keep the rigs in position, not allowing them to get towed around in the strong cross winds.

I have spread some Mainline boilies around the swim to try to interest any passing carp and lightly baited my spots. I am fishing with large hand hand made hookbaits to avoid the bream and tench and be able to leave the baits out two or three days if required, with confidence they will still be intact and working.

That's pretty much the scenario for the rest of the trip, I did manage to get the two shorter rods working, which was nice and a lot easier, although it was the long rod which produced the biggest two fish of the trip, the other being another common of 57lb.

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