Chambon is a lava-dammed lake — the Tartaret volcano erupted some three thousand years ago, sent a lava flow down the valley, and blocked the Couze Chambon river where it runs out of the Monts Dore. The result is a fifty-hectare lake in a wide, sunny basin with the volcano sitting at one end and the fishing going on at the other. It gets busier than Pavin or Chauvet in summer because it has beaches and pedaloes and all the apparatus of a proper French family holiday, which is fine — you just fish it in the hour before the pedaloes come out. Trout and perch, standard cast. The inflow at the east end and the outflow by the Tartaret are both worth time. Not the most remote water in the Massif Central, but a good lake all the same if you pick your hours.
- Lake
- Volcanic
