Abbey Lakes Adventure: A Week on Heron with Ellis
Abbey Lakes Adventure: A Week on Heron with Ellis
With busy family and work commitments, opportunities for foreign carping trips have been few and far between. In fact, since the children were born 14 years ago, I hadn’t ventured back into Europe. But this summer, Ellis (our eldest) and I finally created the chance for a week at the famous Abbey Lakes in France.
We made the drive across on Friday, fully geared up and ready to attack the 35-acre Heron Lake from Saturday morning. Sharing such a large expanse of water — with depths reaching over 25ft — with just five other anglers was never going to be easy. The carp here are under constant pressure, and it’s well known that they quickly drift into quieter areas. From the start, I knew our approach had to be subtle, stealthy, and most importantly optimised to convert every bite.
A quick lap of the lake revealed a significant number of carp fizzing and showing at the easterly end. It was impossible to ignore. Activity peaked late morning through to early afternoon — a pattern that continued all week — which made planning our baiting and day trips easy. This trip was as much about quality time and relaxation as it was about putting carp on the bank.
With spots accurately marked, clipped up and baited, we were fortunate to be the only anglers at that end of the lake. Having roughly a third of the water to ourselves gave us the luxury to bait and wait, but it required careful balance: enough bait to draw fish in, without overdoing it and putting them off. Rig-wise, I placed all faith in my 4.5” multi-rig, tied with key Evolve products.
The first night produced nothing, and it was clear our initial presence had pushed the carp a couple of hundred yards further down the lake. Still, I was happy to sit tight and let them drift back. After all, they’d been hammering the swim only the previous morning.
On the second morning, our first carp arrived, with signs of feeding activity gradually building again in front of us. Confident in our baiting approach, I decided to make one small but significant tweak: switching from a QC weight clip to the new Flexi QC weight clip. The pivoting QC link gives greater freedom of movement to the hooklink, while still encouraging the rig to settle neatly on the lakebed. On Abbey’s firm yet silty drop, that extra movement clearly made all the difference — as the bites soon came thick and fast.
Wednesday morning brought three thirties in quick succession, one on each rod, leaving us rod-less for a while! Across six nights, despite not fishing hard (thanks to plenty of family trips out), we ended up with 12 bites and 12 carp landed.
It was a brilliant trip — a perfect mix of fishing, downtime, and sharing special time with Ellis. Abbey delivered in every way, and I can’t wait to go back.
All the best,
Carl Udry.