Vénimus, Vidimus, Défécimus.

16 September, 2026 | Carp | Angler Blogs | Articles

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Vénimus, Vidimus, Défécimus.

By Andy Bradnock

It’s that time of year again which sees four of us climbing into vans and heading South across the Channel, with the hope of ensnaring a monster French carp or two. The usual build up started a couple of weeks before our departure date in late-October, as weather forecasts were perused on the BBC weather app.

The BBC may have dropped the ball a little when Panorama made the Malevolent Orange Potato look a little more awful than he is (which is quite a feat) 0but, their weather app is top-notch.

It looked like we were in for high pressure, still, settled conditions, with clear skies and 20°C daytime temperatures. For late-October these conditions would make for comfortable bankside lounging but are not great for fish catching.

This year the Doc and Chris were more determined than ever to steal the glory and take home the trophy.

As with the previous year the combined weight of the five biggest fish for each pair would secure the victory. We were heading just below Tour, our final destination the beautiful Moulin du Mee. We are quite vanilla when it comes to our weeks away as it is our only trip each year.

I don’t work as hard as I used to, but poor Adam is working harder now that he is retired, than he did when he was gainfully employed as a servant of the state. He constantly quotes figures of a 48hr working week, which is an exaggeration but it makes time off precious.

Many of the trips we have made Sausage-Side have been less than productive, so Moulin du Mee does provide a consistent and reliable venue.

The owners are lovely, the rules sensible and not restrictive and the fish are plentiful and huge.

Before we started fishing Moulin, we hadn’t been to a lake that even held a sixty, here there are seventies and eighties present, with a hatful of sixties and more fifties than you can shake a stick at. You can only catch what is in front of you.

A total stock of around 300 fish in 14 acres ensures that despite the fish being heavily pressured year-round, a bite or two each is possible. Some weeks are much tougher than others and the lake is by no means a push-over but it means that trips can have a holiday vibe to them rather than being a hard slog.

We had been told by the owner that some extensive tree work had been done around the lake this year. The Chateau bank had always had the ubiquitous line of French Poplars, which had been stood as sentinels for the last forty-odd years; like a familiar smile they had been part of the back-drop of the lake for every trip we have made.

We didn’t know how this would affect the vistas and ambience of the lake as all 300 Poplars had been felled. They were initially planted as a cash-crop and should have been harvested a few years ago, age and condition had made a few dangerous so the decision to remove them was made.

What a transformation, the view opened up to distant wooded hillsides and the now visible field running along the Northern border of the lake was full of exciting wildlife. This year Adam and I had the Home bank, the Chateau bank playing host to the Men Mountains, the water level had remained high all year (despite the drought), due to the removal of all the thirsty Poplars.

This made the Home bank an easy and comfortable place to spend a week. The lack of trees on the far bank meant we experienced some unexpected avian highlights this year. Our first intriguing sight was a small Buzzard that hovered over the adjacent field that was, before harvest, full of sunflowers.

This now bare stubble field was home to huge numbers of small mammals and amphibians, providing food for the Giant Egrets that stalked for hours hunting their way from one end of the field to the other.

We had never seen a Buzzard hover in this way before, initially thinking it was a behavioural quirk that one individual had learnt. As the week went on, we realised more than one bird was displaying this behaviour and they all looked smaller than an average buzzard. This is when we realised that these were in fact Rough-legged Buzzards a much rarer species that is renowned for hovering which is something I was previously unaware of. Later in the week we were privileged to see a Montagu’s Harrier glide over this amazing field.

The fishing started really slowly, Adam lost one while we were eating Saturday night’s dinner of Lamb Tagine. Contact lasting less than a minute the fish making good its escape. This was however the only action of the first 24hrs.

It wasn’t until late on the Sunday afternoon that Chris put the first mark on the scoreboard a fin perfect 49lb mirror. This year Chris out-fished us all by some way and would become his superhero alter-ego TRC (top rod Chris) as, through the night he added another 4 fish to his tally including another two 49lbers. We think his scales had rusted due to lack of use and got stuck at 49.

It was the very early hours of Monday morning that I finally had my first take. Being dragged awake by a screaming buzzer is just about the best wake up call, within a few seconds I was upright and rod in hand as battle commenced. After 40+ years of carp fishing this is pretty well done on autopilot but I wasn’t fully awake, sporting a stupid grin for at least a few more seconds.

The fish came in really easily and within a couple of minutes, with no line relinquished an unexpectedly large framed mirror popped up in the margins in front of me. At 55lb 3oz the deep chestnut coloured fish was a fantastic way for me to open this year’s account.

During the previous day I had been getting multiple liners on the middle rod. These were due to pike, some managed to get tangled up in the mainline, I was using the 0.40mm Kaizen nylon which had been quite heavily hyped by the Korda boys. In this instance the hype is justified as despite being wrapped around the mouth of a snaggle-tooth the line was unscathed.

This did mean though that the middle-rod had had a few hoppers of bait deposited in the area so was my most heavily baited spot. This background history meant that when the middle rod pulled up an inch then stopped at 05:00, I ignored it assuming it was another liner.

A minute or so later the rod roared off, dispelling all pretence of being anything other than a carp bite. The night had become still and silent with the air pressure sitting at 1010mb the only sound being the slow ticking of the Daiwa clutch.

An engine became audible as an early commuter slowly climbed a distant hill, his headlights picking up the white posts that lined the road producing a strange strobe like effect. This close quiet atmosphere heightens the senses during a fight and this thing felt slow, ponderous almost and huge, as it begrudgingly gave up ground and nylon was painstakingly returned to its rightful place on the reel.

As the fish neared the margin the line angle lessened as it came up in the water. Numerous pike were flipping and leaping in the beam of my head-torch. It would only take a fleeting contact for the taut nylon to be severed and contact be lost. The in close part of the fight seemed to go on for hours but slowly I was winning as the fish tired, its runs less powerful.

As it came up, a huge tail broke the surface looking like a billowing bed sheet and before it had another chance to use this powerful rudder, I bundled the sparsely scaled Royale strain mirror into the net.

It looked huge sitting in the edge, the scales later confirmed that this was indeed the case reading 64lb 12oz, even at this weight the tail still looked disproportionately large. This year Adam and I were trying our hands at being film-stars and cameramen.

If none of these videos have come to light then you can conclude that we were as atrocious at this as we thought we would be. With this in mind I set up all the camera gear, lighting and video kit before I went to collect Sleeping Disgusting from his pit.

As soon as we started recording Captain Pottymouth began a sleep addled diatribe that would get us cancelled quicker than you can say Philip Schofield, so I fear most if not all of our films will end up on the cutting room floor. After spending a week doing small sections of filming and trying to put a meaningful story together, we found it difficult if not impossible. We soon realised these skills are not in our wheelhouse.

Chris managed to catch another 49lber just after his second breakfast but before elevenses, this was the last of the action for the day. The lake had felt dead; there were no fish showing and hardly a bubble troubled the lakes surface.

The weather remained still with the high-pressure un-abating which had dropped the lakes oxygen level especially in Adam’s corner of the lake which historically always suffers the most in low oxygen conditions. He and the Doc had yet to catch which is un-heard of on these trips usually.

Through the day the Giant Egrets ghosted across the field opposite in an ethereal way and I was treated to a kingfisher using a branch bordering my swim as a perch, he gainfully employed the stout branch to brain the fish he had caught, before they were swallowed.

The only bite of the night was again to Chris as he continued to deserve his TRC moniker, the only other thing of note that day was that the Doc seemed to be spending a large proportion of the morning bending over, this admirably displayed his arse crack for our delectation; I tried bleaching my eyes but still the image refused to be washed away.

As the light levels dropped Adam added a 42lbs 12oz mirror to our totals but this was the only bite of the evening and the lake still didn’t give away any sign of life living below its flat mirror-like surface. As the night progressed the weather suddenly began to improve, a westerly wind picked up and finally the surface of the lake was ruffled for the first time this week.

This seemed to ring the dinner bell and runs were heard from all around the lake, a couple from the dam including a lovely 50lb common for Adam and the Doc had his first two fish one of which pulled the needle round to 58lb. This was great news as he had started to worry that he would be blanking for the week.

As it was Wednesday, we sorted out the halfway scores. The sex-machines 250lbs 4oz and the film-stars 250lbs 6oz. We then made ourselves presentable and headed into civilisation and the local supermarket.

After a few days of quiet solitude, I find the assault on my senses disquieting, even the smells of perfume and deodorant seem really ‘loud’ after being surrounded by just natural woodland smells for half a week. We brought steaks and a few other bits we had run out of, then escaped back to our bankside hovels.

The steaks were sadly underwhelming but I was treated to another Adam revelation on the way back. It turns out he cannot poo and pee at the same time. I find it amazing that after 30 years of fishing together he can still reveal information about himself that shocks me. His bodily functions have defied all medical science for some years but this was an interesting take on his inability to multi-task.

Through the Wednesday night Chris and the Doc racked up numerous bites and it wasn’t until 03:44 that my left-hand rod decided I had been patient long enough rewarding me with a blistering take.

The quiet of the early dawn again seemed to exaggerate the senses as the giant feeling, slow moving weight was carefully drawn back towards me. Steady pressure brought the fat bellied Italian looking mirror into netting range, at 59lbs 3oz it was a significant lump and an awkward shape to hold for the photos.

The pictures at Moulin always have to be done in the water and for some reason this swim’s margins are littered with enormous boulders which I was constantly stumbling over making getting pictures trickier than normal.

The morning heralded another 54lber for TRC as he continued to deserve his moniker; the significance to this capture was that he decided to use his best ‘sexual predator’ face for the pictures.

Just looking at the photographs in my swim curdled the milk and wilted the lettuce that had outlasted the Truss premiership.

The day was terrible fishing wise but mid-morning I heard a squirrel scrambling up a nearby tree. This was initially dismissed as ‘tree rat’ in my head but then I remembered ‘you are in France – it will be a red squirrel’. Then poking around the trunk, the red-tufted ears of the most wonderful squirrel became visible, I cursed the Victorians for their foolish introduction of their grey cousins to our fair isle.

That night the amount of bats hunting over the lake in the half-light seemed ridiculous we even videoed them chasing the abundant fly life that seems to fill the night sky in this part of France. The night time videos we made of the fish we caught were bombarded by various winged critters attracted to our lighting.

My next action came in the early hours of Friday morning; I had started fishing a spot a fair way down my near margin which is only 2.5ft deep. There were a number of swans on the lake this year and as this is well within swan-depth I hadn’t put a bait there thus far.

There had been an exodus in the swans so I decided to use this spot. In the two nights I fished it I received half-a-dozen takes, all from small commons that had been spawned in the lake between 5 and 25lbs.

My first bite of the night was from this margin spot a Crucian looking double. The next action was at 02:20 when the left rod was away, after an unspectacular scrap I was scooping up a 49lbs 12oz mirror. I left it in a retainer while I set up the camera gear and lighting then, as I was about to go and collect

Adam, the margin rod was away again. This was a 25lb pristine common so I stole the retainer from the next-door swim and had the pair sat side by side while I roused my photographer.

Before we started the photo session the remaining rod pulled up tight and held resulting in yet another double figure common.

We did the photos of the common first which was simple and straight forward; the 49 however was a complete dickhead, it wouldn’t sit still and was almost impossible to hold. We had managed to get a couple of shots on one side of it when it started flapping really hard again and managed to slip out of my hands and back into the lake.

We thought it was gone but it bumped into my legs as I was getting out of the pond so I just bent down and grabbed it scooping it back onto the floating un-hooking mat. This was all caught on the video camera we had running; Adam was half out of the water when I told him I had got it, on the film he just says ‘later you are going to have to explain to me what just happened’.

The fish still played up but we eventually managed a few decent shots of it before it flipped again escaping my hands, this time permanently.

This fish brought the five fish totals for the two banks really close again, we were on 279lbs 3oz and the sex-pests were on 280lbs. It stayed like this until just before 18:00 when TRC landed yet another fifty at 52lbs 13oz. This put them on 282lbs 8oz which turned out to be the final score as although the final night produced a few bites for us all none of them were big enough to trouble the totals.

On the Saturday morning, we were all packed down and showered, then we had to face the reaper. The fat men had sung and we had to present the trophy to the sex-pests. Chris has taken to sending us pictures of it in various locations which has made me smile through this winter. It will be sad to have to take it from them again next year.

Until next year