Today I managed to get out and do some fishing nice and early, last night was quite mild and I hoped the Chub and Barbel were on the feed so I packed very light and only packed the basics but I did make an adjustment to my gear, which was the changing of my line as I usually use Diawa sensor but recently I have had a couple of line breaks and I have almost lost faith in it so I spooled up a couple of my Shimano Exage 4000 reels with 7.3lb line from Rovex XTS mono line to see if I could connect with something decent to give the line a test to see if this brand of line is any good and I employed my usual tactic of rolling.
A couple of miles walking and popping in and out of swims I struggled to find a fish of either species but I did after about 2 hours of fishing, I hooked a Chub that put up a fight but very briefly that weighed 3lbs 2ozs, which is a good fish to catch that did save a blank on a day that it seemed was becoming more and more inevitable, I decided to go back on myself and try again to see if I had missed one that was lingering about.
So after along walk back and another hour or so had passed I was just thinking about packing up when my rod wrenched around in my hand, instinctively striking into a Barbel that wanted to fight and it did, very well it has to be said plus the line was doing okay and also I felt more confident that I would land this one, roughly 4 minutes of it scrapping around I reached for my net and she came in first time, after weighing, photographing she was released fit and it was time to head home.
6lb 10oz Winter Barbel.
Nice one. Really wanted to get out on Sunday before the next big chill, but couldn't make it - glad someone is catching!
ReplyDelete