Blackwater Returns.

 

 Throughout my teenage years I spent many thousands of hours targeting Barbel in low gin clear rivers and really hammered home my love for fishing stealthily, so when I do make those journeys back to the Blackwater in search of a double figure Barbel its like going back 20+ years to those days of my well-spent youth.

 Last week I restarted my 40 Rivers Challenge on the diminutive Blackwater in search of a fish a pound bigger than what I have previously managed (9lb 1oz), now I haven't seen anything bigger than that, in fact I have seen very little for that matter, part of that maybe due to the fact in the summer it is heavily choked with ribbon weed and ranunculus so there is plenty of room to hide, but also I am not entirely sure the stocks are vast, in fact I do feel I am searching for isolated pockets of fish across a few miles of river.

 It really is a difficult conundrum to solve as I can't tell most of the time whether I'm in the right place or not! Last Wednesday I spent 12hrs down there, roving around and then static fishing toward the evening in a spot that looked like it should be holding Barbel but I left at nearly 11pm without a touch.

 Fast forward to yesterday. I had a few jobs booked in in the morning and had the roving gear in the motor, so when I finished in West London I shot out to Berkshire to try my hand once again at a Blackwater Barbel, or maybe just a fish! to get the confidence up a little bit. After a nights rain I thought the river would be a poor state but it wasn't too bad and I could still sight fish, but only just as the humidity was soooooooo bad that I couldn't regulate my body temp at times and sweated from pores I didn't even I know I had! So there were times I couldn't see into the water given the glare.

 Now, sometimes the Barbel can give you a little hint as to where they are and when one randomly flashes on a set of narrow gravels the radar kicks into gear very quickly and once I saw one I saw five! Over the next couple of hours I managed to catch two of them both of which were around the 5lb mark and those that I saw remaining on the gravels were of similar size, that double still elusive, I spent a couple more hours wandering around trying to find something a bit bigger but found nothing other than a few Pike, one of which was certainly a double, just hanging off the back of small Chub and Roach.

1st Barbel

2nd Barbel marginally bigger.

 It was great to finally catch another Barbel off the Blackwater but really need to find more prolific grounds, not sure I'm where I need to, or am I in the right place and the bigger fish just aren't showing themselves.. only time will tell.

Jungle warfare Barbel ready to go back.