Vantastic Lukas: It just doesn't work!

Withdrawn

When Christoph, Julian and I parted ways in the French Alps, I needed some time alone again. I pushed back some work that I had to do on the PC during the last week of fishing together. My resulting guilty conscience was the reason for me to withdraw for a short time in order to concentrate on things other than catching fish.

I spent two days in remote places in the deep forests of the national parks near the Cote d' Azur. There I had enough free and clear thoughts that I needed for writing on the PC. After two and a half months of everyday life in our hometown, the peace and the distant civilization had an incredibly slowing effect.

A spontaneous meeting

When I felt like I had done my self-imposed “duties”, I went to the beach of the Cote d' Azur to jump into the sea for possibly the last time this year. The promenade in Sanary sur Mer was a wonderful place to stroll along and celebrate the good weather.

In the afternoon I spontaneously paid a visit to a French angler who lives nearby and spent the evening in good company at Lucas's house.

...These spontaneous and unplanned encounters and meetings make traveling abroad so valuable for me and what it ultimately is: an adventure that you plunge into without prejudice and simply let it happen without expectations...

Reunion with an old acquaintance

The next day started gray and rainy and made me abandon my original plan to visit the city of Aix-en-Provence. To do this, we went to the quaint town of Argeles sur Mer as the weather steadily improved.

From there I quickly headed to “Devil’s Lake” to meet an old acquaintance who was currently on a similar course to fish in the south for an indefinite period of time. The meeting point was the same where we met last year. We spent the evening in a parking lot by the water without fishing. The next day we decided to continue because there were too many anglers on the entire lake and we were no longer interested in fishing.

Where did all the water go?!

After almost three hours of driving, we stood at the next body of water and were shocked to see that the lake was extremely low. This shrunk the fish and the anglers into a very limited space. This circumstance was somehow off-putting to me, so I convinced Clemens to start the engine again to check out another lake.

Although the water level there was similarly low, the topography meant that fishing was much freer and more extensive.

The blank takes its course

We chose a place that was easy to reach by car to try there for the first few days. After five nights with one carp as well as a lost fish for me and several carp for Clemens, we changed locations to get a little more peace from the “slipping” predatory fish anglers.

The new spot offered absolute peace and some shelter from the predicted winds over the coming days. With the wind came two days of continuous rain. That's exactly what our places looked like: the ground was completely soggy, the boats were full of water and mud was sticking everywhere.

With the bad weather front came the fish. Above all, they got bigger - but unfortunately only with Clemens. I sat next to it and looked stupidly out of the laundry. At first I thought it was just a coincidence, but after the third better fish he caught, the difference could no longer be overlooked. My rods were in good places, sometimes in close proximity to a rod from Clemens that had brought fish several times. But my bite alarms were silent. After three nights of no action, the frustration steadily increased. The muddy place and the increasingly scarce food supplies contributed the rest.

Frustrating days

I was tired of the place, the lake - I didn't really feel like fishing anymore. I would have liked to take a break but somehow I couldn't give up so easily. After all, the supposedly “best time” of the year was approaching and I didn’t want to just let it pass me by. The last decent fish I caught had been some time ago and it was slowly time to get a good one out of the water.

I'm curious when the spell will be broken for me...

After 10 days we decided to leave the lake to replenish our supplies and move on together.