Blanking Equals Success.

 During the week I had spent an evening on the banks fishing a tactic rarely deployed by myself (static), I find being mobile is the best approach to Barbel fishing, I have covered this topic many times in the past and a session during the week followed by a trip made yesterday morning were in stark contrast of each other, the evening session was spent in a couple of swims fishing pellet over a bed of small micro pellets in the vein hope of catching a Barbel but after 4 hours of fishing nothing materialized and I headed home without a touch. It made me think alot about what I was doing and I also re-evaluated my tactics and setup with the view to improving my static fishing catch rate, this blank will certainly bring further success and it was my first blank for Barbel all season which is astonishing to think, 19 Barbel in 11 trips, I think that's great going - I hope it carries on.

The selection.

My rig, which has been successful but not on that occasion.

 Fast forward to Friday morning and originally a dawn Perch session was planned but the heavy leaf fall has littered my chosen venue so fishing with a spinner was practically impossible so I bailed out on the trip and changed my gear over at home, swapping spinner for rolling gear, going light with basic gear I could cover a maximum amount of water. Spotted: What is great about sight seeing is the thrill of watching the Barbel swimming or holding position in swift current, then flicking or placing a bait upstream of my target and angling it towards them, as my bait came roughly 4ft from the two Barbel one left it's position and went straight for the bait, heart in mouth the bait disappeared and the line tightened up on my finger and struck immediately, a lovely fish of 7-8lb charged around in the pacy water, showing off its raw power, turning, flashing it's gold flanks and watching the pectoral fins and anal fin constantly changing angles to alter it's course through the water and using the flow to it's absolute maximum, such a great sight to see and after a good 5 minute scrap I finally got the chance to net the Barbel, good stuff.

 10 minutes later after allowing the swim to calm down I rolled a bait back down the swim to the remaining Barbel and it was almost as if the second one didn't know what was happening as the Barbel took my bait so confidently and I was locked into a battle slightly stronger than the first, fantastic stuff!. My first Barbel was weighed at 7lb 10oz and the second was weighed in at 7lb 12oz (pictured below), both were two peas in a pod, surely from the same batch of eggs, I was tempted to do a brace shot but the net would have struggled to hold both Barbel in so I released the first and the netted the second one.

At 7.12 this was the biggest of the two, identical to the first one.

 Then I had walked over a mile and a half before I had another positive take and this was in the form of a larger fish that made no mistake in nailing my rolled bait but the fight was rather disappointing as a large but short framed Barbel cruised to the surface after a brief bit of resistance, weighing at 8lb 14oz it was the best of the day and after another hour's rolling I didn't have anymore joy but rolling over static on any river, any day, any condition.

A chunky 8.14, 3 Barbel in 90 minutes is not bad at all.

 But over the winter my confidence in static fishing at night will surely improve as I start to bank a few Barbel, my target will be a 12lb plus Barbel but session's will be few and far between as my predator's campaign remains my primary target and as the flooded rivers drop and the colour disappears I will head back out for Pike and Perch but before then I will be off to fish the Coventry canal with Jeff Hatt & Co for Zander - for which better be playing ball tomorrow!!