Funny old sport this...

 Over the weekend I managed to aquire a 10ft Shakespeare match fishing rod (Omni Match) and I have been itching to try it out for some small fish so I decided to go on the hunt for some Roach and other silvers, so with that in mind I spooled up with 5lb line and a selection of floats and a small loaf of bread.

 Again as usual I packed up very light and went for a long walk in search of some fish, but my day didn't go as planned as I'd hoped and finding the Roach and the like was very difficult with only a couple of Dace rising in a 2 mile stretch which was not what I expected but I haven't fished the bottom reaches of my most local river for quite a few years and the river had changed alot since I had last been and seemingly the fish have vanished or playing very hard to find.

 So after a long walk upstream I started to reach the more familiar beats where I know shoals of Dace lay up, so I positioned myself at the top of swim and broke up a hand of bread and watched it drift throw the water levels and creating a white mist of flake as the water carried it downstream, a few seconds later I cast a small piece flake downstream with which my float slowly dipped and the sailed away and a fairly firm strike was met by a wrenching tug on my very light gear and only after a brief fight it broke free cutting my line on something sharp on the bottom, it could only have been a Barbel and fairly sizeable by the brief scrap I did have, so obviously the Barbel were feeding and the silvers weren't so I moved to few more swims with again no joy.

 20 casts later, I was into another Barbel whilst trotting bread flake through a deep pool hoping to find a Roach or Dace but again found a large powerful Barbel that wanted to show off it's immense power against my very light tackle and it did for a good 5 mins when I guided it towards my net but the next thing that happened wasn't in the script when my landing net handle came unattached from my net with Barbel making a break for it to open river, so I needed to start playing the Barbel again and rescue my net whilst working out how I'd land it but I opted in the end to head down to the tail end of the swim and scoop the Barbel out with just the net.
 

 

A stocky 8lb 14oz Barbel.

 

So much for Roach fishing because I had gone even further up stream and had the same issue when on my first trot I had another quality take which ended up being a nice Barbel again at 7lb on the button which also put up a very good strong fight on a very thin and flimsey rod that I certainly didn't expect it to handle the pressure of a Barbel as well as it did, so far for £20 it's looking a right bargain.

 

 

Another 7lb bracket Barbel to finish up with.

 

I'll manage a Roach sometime soon.