Incredible Fishing In France! Open Des Orgues 2025

Our MAP pair was made up of former World Feeder Champion Michael Buchwalder and Ian Didcote who were joined by MAP media man, Tony Curd all travelling together, so plenty of laughs would be had on the 14-hour journey to the venue.

Arriving on Thursday evening, we checked into the accommodation and started prepping for a practise session with Damien to try and glean some information and get a feel for the venue ahead of the first match day.

 
The reservoir is truly vast, extremely deep with depths to over 150 feet in places and most importantly packed with fish.

The main thing on a venue like this is sussing out the depth you need to fish in, and with Damien suggesting the fish might head into deeper water with a temperature drop and some rain, it would mean the practise day would be very important to getting an idea of where to start.

The Practise

For our practise day we headed to the Labassette section, some 30 minutes’ drive up the reservoir from where the draw would take place, to give some scale of the venue size.

Damien told us that this area was particularly good, and big weights possible particularly from pegs 6-10 so we decided to sit on peg 6.



We were going to try two different mixes on this trip – a roach mix made up of Gros Gardons and Super Black but the mix we were most interested in was a fishmeal mix which seems to be favoured by venue regulars, that the skimmers love.

The skimmer mix was made up of Dynamite Baits Swim Stim Green, Marine Halibut and Sweet Banoffi this gave us a mix of both sweet and fishmeal flavours which hopefully, all fish would prefer.



The organisers of the event feed 60 kilos of pellets in each section every night leading up to the event, so you can see why a fishmeal groundbait would probably be better as the fish are already used to feeding on pellets.

The next thing was to find the right depth, using a bit of experience, Michael and Ian decided to start at 46 metres in a ten-count which equates to 30ft of water, with deeper and shallower water available too, they would be able to experiment to find the best depth throughout the day.



Tackle wise things were very simple, Michael opted for 12ft MAP Parabolix Pro SUV Feeder rods while Ian selected 12ft Extremis rods instead, both perfect for the range and style of fishing on offer, these were teamed with 5000 sized reels loaded with 0.12mm braid.



Rig wise, a paternoster set up was preferred, giving a direct presentation which in deep water is a massive help in seeing bites much quicker than you could on a running rig. Hook lengths were very robust, with 0.21mm Optimum Power to size 12 and 10 hooks being the norm.

In such deep water it was all about window feeders, with a minimum of 45g being needed to get the rig down quickly and reach the desired distance, with the bait encapsulated inside the feeder, getting bites on the bottom without a cloud coming off the feeder on the descent is more effective than drawing the fish up in the water to intercept the feed.



At the start of the session, both Ian and Michael used bait up feeders to deposit a large bed of groundbait, casters, chopped worm and corn into the peg along with plenty of Dynamite Halibut Marine and F1 Sweet pellets.

The beauty of the American pairs style is that both anglers fish the same peg so when we started our practise one angler fished maggots and the other fished worms to see what was best and species were present.



Straight away we were getting bites from skimmers and an odd roach, amazing fishing and everyone else who had come to practise were also bagging! What was interesting was how other anglers were feeding – not quite as aggressively as us, but they were catching just as quickly so it was something to consider.

We had the most amazing day on the bank for our first time on the venue, and we found that by upping the particle through the feeder, we could get bites much quicker and hold the fish for longer. 



There were also a few surprise catches amongst the roach and bream too – a number of big rudd, most over a pound and a 2lb+ specimen for Diddy, and after a few lost catfish, Ian managed to land one of around 10lb too – they don’t count in the match, but it was Diddy’s first cat and what a place to catch it from!



The lake also holds some big wild Ide too which can be as big as 5 or 6lb, so we were hoping to catch one of those during the event too… With over 120lb in our keepnets and lots of fish returned once the net limit had been reached, it was time to head back and tie some more hooks ahead of day one. 



We had learned a lot and the biggest thing was the choice of depth – the French anglers seemed to be fishing similar depths to us, so we felt as though we had it half right. 

Open Des Orgues – Day One

There was a real buzz around the draw as the anglers gathered for the draw which would determine the pegs for both days of the competition.



Michael went up and done the draw for the team and produced Montiel Peg 9, the reaction of the local anglers suggested that this was a very good draw indeed, with the section capable of producing a big weight.

As we headed down onto the section after a short drive from the draw, we were met with stunning views including the Chateau which overlooks the lake providing an amazing setting for the match ahead.



Tactics were going to be similar to the previous day, find a ten count in 30ft of water and stick that up, on this occasion it was 44 metres so a very comfortable distance to hopefully catch quick enough to compete.

Bait again, very similar to the practise day – worms, casters, pellets, chopped and whole corn with a few maggot for hook baits covering the particle side and the fishmeal mix once again being the choice of the MAP team with a big weight of skimmers and bream being the target.



At the start both anglers again employed the bait up rods, Michael feeding lots of particles with a bait up window feeder, while Ian fed more groundbait with a big cage, a real team effort!

Both of our anglers chucked out at the start, and immediately the pair to the left were into fish, but Ian and Michael had to wait a few minutes for their first bites, causing a little panic! Steadily though they caught roach to begin with, and then the skimmers moved in adding vital weight to their tally.



It wasn’t uncommon for both anglers to be catching fish at the same time, and to try and speed things up, swinging the fish in saved some time – the French anglers were surprised by this as they tend to land a lot of fish over 6oz, but the aggressive English style of fishing could be a real advantage in a big weight scenario.



At the halfway stage, both Ian and Michael were catching well with a keepnet maxed out each, and adding to their second keepnet, the pair on the left were absolutely flying at this point and were threatening to overtake if we didn’t speed things up. A change of feeding to more worms seemed to drag the fish back in numbers to keep putting fish in the net.

Michael picked up on a bite on the drop, and a different fight suggested he had latched into something different, after a short scrap a lovely Ide approaching 3lb was scooped up into the waiting landing net… well we did say we wanted to catch one before we went home!



The sheer number of fish being caught in the section was staggering, everywhere you looked someone was playing or landing fish, quite incredible and possibly some of the very best sport Europe has to offer.

At the end of day one Michael and Ian had six keepnets to weigh, the pair to left were likely to be the biggest threat but with Baptiste Courtellemont and his partner down on end peg 1 they could also spring a surprise so an anxious wait for the scales commenced.



On peg one Baptiste and Valentin had put 77 kilos on the scales, and were leading, the pair to the left of our MAP pairing put an impressive 75 kilos on the scales.

After many weighs Diddy and Michael totalled an amazing 86 kilos 720 grams to most importantly, win the section, and come second on the day to MAP France’s Damien Lemdani and Mathieu Neyrat who caught an incredible 97 kilos to win the day. 



Day Two

For the second day we were heading to Aubazine Peg 5, this was an average draw with the biggest weights coming from either end of the section the previous day so it would be a challenge to pull a decent result from this one.



What was noticeably different from this section to the previous day was that being closer to the dam wall, the terrain was much more rugged made up of stones, sand and large rocks which would most likely extend into the lake as well so there could be some snags to negotiate.

The water was also much deeper, and getting the depth right here wouldn’t be so straight forward.



Ian and Michael once again found the ten-count which was at 42 metres but also set rods up in deeper water at 60 metres in case they needed to try and catch some bigger bream to catch up.

Everything was much the same as it had been in terms of rods, tackle, rigs and bait so it was quite literally going to be a case of seeing what was out there and working it out as they went along.



Diddy fed the 42-metre line while Michael fed the longer line during the baiting up period, with both anglers starting on the shorter of the two. To their delight, they were straight into the fish again, but on this occasion, it was mainly roach that were caught in the early stages, but with a lower weight needed here they carried on undeterred.



A few skimmers started to show, but it soon became apparent that the pegs to the left of us were having much more success, the peg we had drawn seemed to be littered with big rocks and losing gear was common, as was fish getting snagged on the slope on the way back in, so keeping the rod high was a must to give yourself the best chance of landing fish.

The pair immediately to the left had been bagging, and they seemed to be fishing slightly shorter so a tactical decision to stick up at 36 metres and rebait was made to hopefully fish in the same depth and catch up as that seemed to be the key to their success.

 

Diddy was sat to the left of our peg and we felt he had the best chance of catching the most so he sat it out at 36 metres while Michael explored the longer line with some success catching a few better skimmers, but had the 36-metre line kicked off, both anglers could swap over and plunder the shoal.

The fishing had been fantastic again, although not quite the bag up of day one, we’d caught steadily all day but we’d lacked the big run of quality fish to put enough pressure on the leaders.

 

The skimmers and roach were noticeably smaller on this section, but those on the fish had also managed to catch quite a few 3lb+ fish too, so they were around in areas.

At the all-out, the MAP France pair further up had put 54 kilos on the scales and the pair to the left won the section with an impressive 59 kilos.



Ian and Michael’s nets totalled 31kilos 020 grams to finish 5^th in the section, as the points are allocated in a continental format for fairness, in an ordinary match in England they’d have been third.



At the results it was Baptiste Courtellemont and Valentin Lefevre who won with a 3-point score and a 143-kilo weight, amazing fishing by anyone’s standards!

Michael and Ian finished up in 7^th place with 6 points and a 117 kilo weight over the two days, a great showing for their first trip to the venue and they’ll be looking forward to a return next year to try and improve on that…



The venue had shown just how good it is, and there was a staggering 3,268 kilos caught by the 48 pairs in just two days, is this the best venue in Europe?

We’ll let you decide…