opus review

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Gareth from Carp-lakes.co.uk field-tested new bait from opusbaits at lac fishabil in France.

Myself and two other’s from respected company’s arrived at lac fishabil early Sunday morning to start a weeks fishing. Those that aren’t aware of the lake it’s 65 acres in size and holds all carp to 65lb along with blue carp to over 100lb. You can expect a lot of fish when you get it right on this water but they may only hit mid thirties. To get the bigger ones you need to wait off the known prolific areas. Knowing this before we left we headed for the damn wall a known area for the bigger fish if you can sit it out.

Are aims at this huge lake was to catch big carp using boilies provided by opus baits. The lake has very little in the way of features. The bottom is made up of soft clay and silt so our approach would be to place a marker 120 yards out towards a safe zone marked by buoys and bait heavily using hemp and boilies. We boated kilos of hemp and boilies to our marks and using a throwing stick and spod when the wind allowed topping the swims up and spreading the bait.
The bait we were using was G4-c from Opusbaits its make up is as follows, Glm,Lt94 fishmeal, soluble fish,pre-digested fish,garlic.shrimp,kelp,oyster shell,betaine,liquid fish, liquid mussels and fish oils. We used them in 14-18mm and pre soaked them in the matching glug 3 weeks prior the trip so they really stood out in the silt.

I mounted the baits snowman style with a size 8 kurv shank with ultimate nailing mechanics in the make up of the rig.

The weather wasn’t pleasant for us and the wind and relentless rain held us back but we persisted and sat it out until 7pm on the Wednesday I watched a carp show on my mark


AS soon as I pointed this out to the others 3 bleeps and the baitrunner was engaged bang I was in to my first fishabil carp it was a long way out and heading for the buoys it was a case of hold everything tight and try and turn the carp towards me. It did and I began playing the fish to the bank...... It was an absolute beauty!!

This cracking mirror was the first of my campaign using opus baits it weighted in at 46lb

The bait continued to go in and the fish kept tacking the hook baits things were starting to happen after 4 days blanking. This 31lb mirror was next to fall for the g4-c

Then a 21lb mirror soon followed



I was now running low on bait so I took the opportunity to try single 18mm hook bait 20 yards of the baited area....... it worked!!
A nice big scaled mirror at 28lb
The weather didn’t get much better with two days left to go but we hung in
There I lost a further 2 fish but also landed a 27lb sturgeon and a 54lb catfish


The fish in this lake are lovely scaly fish not your average French looking simmo the hospitality is second to none and Ian Sturmer will look after you all of the way. My 46 mirror was the biggest fish of the week but the north bank and east bank landed between 50-80 carp between 8 anglers so although I didn’t bag up I caught what I went there for so I’m happy but more so for opus baits who have produced a winning formula with g4-c it’s spot on!.


In all the damn wall took over 600lb of fish last week between 3 anglers so we had plenty of fish to keep us happy. Be sure to check out carp talk for the other captures.

The map for this lake is available on our site now so don’t go to the lake without it. It holds the info to help with were your planning to fish.

By Gareth Rivett