Hi all
I live in the south of france and am about to start fishing a big lake nearby (600 HA) called Lac Montbel. Very few people fish for carp and most go for pike because they eat all of them!
I have bought a dinghy because you could never cast the distance needed and will start to look for features, depths etc. I understand the carp feed heavily on natural baits like crayfish so must search out where the crays live.

Does anyone have any basic ideas?
Paul Cann http://www.salagou.ismysite.co.uk has kindly given me some tips relating to another lake he fishes about 3 hours away but i wonder if anyone had any tips? I was thinking of using maize to begin with as it is not widely used on this lake. But I also want to tempt the carp with something similar to crays. What bait out there actually smells like crayfish?
I realise i will need large, hard baits to stop the nuisance fish and crays but any other advice is appreciated.

Its a huge lake as you can see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb3rjGoSgI0&NR=1 the canadian airforce use it to fill up their firefighting planes!

Any thoughts or ideas welcome. I intend to spend a lot of time there!
Cheers
Guinness