Just over a week to go before I'm off to France again.

Phil is fishing the World Carp Classic - so I expect he is even more excited than I am!  I think he's setting off on Saturday and hopes to be at the Registration Party in good time with Mark - the other half of the Reservoir Dogs Team.

My trip to Maison du Lac Bleu has been a whole year in the planning - I started trying to work out plans for the next trip a couple of weeks after my disastrous blank this week last year.  No way do I want to have another week like that - 20 anglers and only three of us blank, yours truly being one of them.  Since then, Phil and I have had two trips to a french river, and highly successful they were too including this fish of 31:05 my best from there so far.  Phil wants to keep the location secret so I can't say where it is.

Last minute panics this week.  Mark (who is fishing with me at MDLB) asked me to bring his bait out with me on the coach (he is living in the Mayenne region at the moment) - all 10 kilos of it, along with my own bait.  I've been air-drying it in the shed to harden it up (lots of Crayfish in the lakes at MDLB) and things were going nicely - I was 'turning' the baits daily and all seemed well - then we had a rather wet week and it seemed as if 'mould' was growing on it!  It looked like nearly 20 kilos of boilies was up the swanny!  Fortunately, this turned out to be only 'freezer burn' - a powdery white deposit left on the surface of the boilies as a result of the freezing process.  Just in case, I spread the bait out all over the floor of the Conservatory - much to Christine's displeasure, so I was in the 'dog-house ' for a couple of days.

Just a few things to do now which hopefully will get done this weekend - pack spare clothes, Euros, tackle-kit, and odds and ends.

This time it's personal.......