A family holiday in the Vendee region of the west of France. I managed three short sessions on local lakes which had all been created by damming little rivers: Apremont, Jaunee and Gue Gorand.

My aim was to try and make contact with some of the local roach. For some reason I reckon some reasonable sized ones will be found in these lakes - though my reason for thinking so is limited to one not very specific comment on a French angling website. In the first two cases I suspected from my experience last year that the problem would be getting past the Bullhead Catfish, and so it proved to be. These aggressive little blighters were onto the bait straight away, and my French was not good enough to find out from local anglers how they solve the problem - if, indeed, they do.

So it was down to Lac Gue Gorand. I tried this last as it was the only lake the man in the angling shop didn't recommend for roach when I quizzed him last year, though a visit to a new angling shop half way through my stay this year yielded the welcome, if surprising, news that Lac Gue Gorand doesn't have any catfish! My trip there was limited to two hours. In the first hour I float-fished and caught very small roach. In the second hour I fished the maggot feeder a bit further out, and caught a couple of better roach, the larger being about 10oz. No big deal, but that roach looked enormous, and was a joy to behold after all the little catfish, hard fighting little critters that they are!