pontoir sept 07

After the disappointment of Callac my next chance to fish would only be a few hours long because of slipping behind the work schedule and wanting to watch some rugby. With this in mind I decided on Pontoir which is the Plan d'eau for the nearby town of Cleguerec. I have fished it years ago but without much success, just a few small roach & rudd if my memory is ok. The venue is about 8 acres of water and includes well kept leisure and picnic facilities. A road runs alongside one bank so access is easy. On this side the grass bank is reinforced with small boulders. There are two islands, again reinforced with boulders, quite uniqiue in some ways. Also the lake is tree lined so I needed to be careful where I set up in relation not just to these trees but to the shadows they cast. In open water I could see a black tip best so I set up a 4 x 12 jolly
with 8 's and 10's strung out. The water was coloured and about 2 metres deep at 10 metres. I cupped in a little groundbait laced with caster and began on red maggot.After just 10mins the float was under and I was into my first roach of around 6 ozs. 3 more roach of similar size followed fairly quickly then things dried up a bit , so as I'd been feeding caster I decided to try one on the hook. Almost immediately I was into a much better stamp of roach with fish between 8 to 14 ozs coming regularly.For just a short while it was one a go but bit by bit bites faded away and I finished this 2 1/2 hr session with 26 roach which I estimated would have gone around 15lbs. A lovely evenings fishing as all the fish where scale perfect. The only problem with this venue is that on beautiful evenings such as this, half the little town wants to dog walk, stroll or jog around it which doesn't help the fishing. I am also suspicious that one of the more beautiful joggers may have been the angling correspondent for Femmes Fantastique et Feminine magazine, or even a secret agent for the Amigos. I think I translated correctly when she explained that French womanhood had no interest in those poncy rugby stars but dreamed only of meeting a Terminator.

plan d'eau Callac

Whenever we are in Brittany I always have to try and consider HG and this visit, also her mum Milly. Milly is not like mothers in law are supposed to be, she is a real love and has a sense of humour. Her passion is gardening and as HG and I share that passion, when we spotted a plant sale at a town called Callac we were on our way. The bad news was that we arrived a couple of hours too early so had some time to kill. The people in the small bar we visited were very friendly but its difficult to sit drinking coffee for 2 hours so we decided on a spin. Purely by chance we stumbled upon the town's Plan d'eau and it looked truly magnificent. There really is so much fishing to be had in Brittany that it is easy to become blase about new venues but this one really did look good. I would guess around 15 to 20 acres with excellent access , tree lined with a path going all the way round. It was an interesting enough venue to make me return a couple of days later. It was a drive of nearly an hour but I was fairly excited about this one. I chose a swim on the car park side and at 11 metres had about 2.5 metres depth, I mixed a little groundbait laced with caster and fed two orange sized balls. It didn't suprise me to get a bite first put in but I pulled out of a small roach.What did suprise me was that it was an hour before I got my next bite , blank avoided, but just a tiny roach . By this time a family arrived with an extremely ugly hunting dog and the whole family took turns to encourage or chastise this wretched creature at the top of their voices which completely got on my nerves. This and the fact that the fish were not co operating made for a hugely dissapointing afternoon. The final tally of 4 roach and 2 rudd was all I could muster, but I still think this venue has potential and I may have caught it on an off day.