Trotting Rocks, End Of.

 Over the years I have not hidden my absolute faith in trotting for barbel and better still the use of bread flake. The use of bread seems to come as a surprise to many anglers I speak to regarding the question as to what are the best baits to use. I look no further than bread on more pressured venues and ones where minnows aren't as prolific, all I know is that bread on its day will out fish any other bait and costs no more than £1, what more could you want?....well, maybe a few of these to make the day complete.

 Before work I had a couple of hours on the river (14th March) to target a barbel, my last trip down didn't set the world alight but after an hour my target was achieved, a really plump barbel around the 4lb mark on my old stick.

 Eight hours later I arrived back at the river and I didn't look back, hitting the ground running could be a good way to describe the first twenty minutes. It was so manic that my first four trots resulted in three barbel and a tree when a cast went astray rather amateurishly, but there was nothing amateurish about the way the barbel were taken, a float set at around 3 inches overdepth with a big lump of flake and held back gently to glance the bottom. When it works its deadly and I can't stress the joy of seeing the float slip under and my split cane rod hoop over under the strain.

 Fish weighing at 3+, upper 4 and 8lb 8oz was great to experience and after moving swim I hooked and landed my best of the day at 9lb 1oz, a lovely clean barbel with one small blemish which really put up a stern fight, which was later followed up by one more youngster probably a low 4lber.

 I will miss these for the next 6 months as my carp challenge is now underway, more of that on another post.

The better of the two small ones.

8.8

9.1

I worked out that on this particular watercourse for the season

I had the following results:

 Sessions (between 1 to 6hrs): 16
 Blanks: 6
 Total barbel landed: 22
 Doubles: 3 ( 11.00, 10.07 & 10.05 )