Specimen Barbel......

......Please apply within for photo shoot, at last I managed to get out and do some fishing, all week I had been trapped at work doing all the hours god throws at me and in truth it was becoming a little laborious and I needed to break the cycle so the best known cure for that is a good old session trotting/rolling for Barbel, a technique rarely used on rivers these days the later of the two not so, I turned up at the river and it was down but still carrying a bit of colour but still tons of leaves on the bottom and washing down, fishing static would have been a waste of time.

 A couple of hours had passed and only had spotted a solitary Barbel and a big shoal of Dace and Roach of which unfortunately did not want to feed but there is plenty more river to search, but when I did finally get a take it was a good size Chub which did fight quite well by Chub standards and at over 4lb was worth the wait and it wasn't long before I did get another take which was alot more powerful which could only have been a Barbel and as I hooked it rose up towards the surface and rolled, with a big flick of the tail it stormed back down to the bottom and straight through a snag which my line grated across and in time the line parted and a Barbel of around 7lb broke free, disaster again.

 I stayed out to fish through dusk and into night, so I plotted up about a mile or so downstream and was joined by Stu who stayed with me as we nagged, dusk had came and went without a touch but after an hour or so I had a quick bounce on the tip but nothing substantial, another hour had passed and Jeff snr had joined me and sat down and we started to talk when Stu re-joined the party and Jeff cast out upstream of me with his trusty MK 4 Avon rod and carried on talking and I decided to stand up and stretch my legs and momentarily turned away from my rod when it slammed around and got ripped out of the rod rest and was literally being dragged down the bank about 5 foot to be exact with Stu and Jeff both laughing at what had just happened but I did latch into the fish, bearing in mind all that happened in about 2 seconds, but I was in to a barbel for sure and it felt like a good fish with a constant powerful run that made my arm ache and after 5 or so minutes I reached for the net and scooped the Barbel in first time, in the dark I couldn't see it was a big fish but when I got it out of the river and put it on the bank we all knew it was going to be a 9lb+ fish but when I slipped the hook out and picked it up I knew straight away it was a double, with Jeff guessing around 8-9lb I knew he was way out and Stu guessing around the high 9lb region, so on to the scales to end the speculation and she was weighed on 2 sets of Avon scales both registering 11lb 7oz, minus the net it was 10lb 8oz another double and my first from this stretch and an audience to boot, commence the photo shoot!

Photography by Stu.

 

An absolutely pristine Barbel and a massive paddle on it as well no wonder why the fight was very strong and on my secret rig again it's really doing the business this season 6 Barbel and 3 of those are doubles weighing 10.8, 10.8 and 14.6. To say the least I headed home very chuffed indeed, Jeff and Stu heading home as well to warm.