Wharfe and Aire Returns.

 

 After a few weeks of planning and sorting out a couple tickets the time had come last Wednesday to get set, this time around though my Dad decided he wanted to come and I thought it would be good for him to get out for a few days. After I finished work I swung by my parents gaff and picked Dad up and drove to mine where we loaded the car and had dinner before setting off for the Wharfe with an arrival time of around midnight (228 miles - 4hrs 22mins).

 Mercifully the roads were clear the whole way barring a 5-minute rolling road block for a highways officer to reset an SOS phone by the looks of it as we were 3 cars from the front...hows your luck.

 Anyway, we arrived half hour ahead of schedule and very quickly I had my two rods out with a load of small pellet lumped out, problem was we are currently having spring tides on the full moon and the part of the river I was fishing is fully tidal but only a few miles from the end of the tidal range, on neap tides the affects aren't felt up here but we gained 3-4ft upon the incoming tide which wasn't comfortable and made everything super muddy.

That said, within 30mins I was away, a rip roaring take as the tide reached the top, the battle was incredible in the deep water (at the time around 13-14ft), the runs were powerful and I felt this fish could be what I had come for and when she finally gave up I really did think it was a comfortable double such was the length of the fish, so when I got her on the scales I was expecting it to be 10lb something, but NO!

 Amazingly she settled on 9lbs 6oz and yes, it beat my Wharfe best by one ounce, but I honestly thought and built up in my mind that she was my 31st river done, alas it wasn't the case. All said and done for the Wharfe a 9.06 Barbel is still a very big fish and doubles aren't common but with my quest nothing less will do in the cold light of day.

 Anyway, after that initial excitement I had to wait three hours for another bite, similar to the first it fought very well but knew fairly quickly it wasn't as big and at 7lb 5oz it proved so, after such a good start I had visions of a mental session and playing the numbers game my chances of a big one would be better, but inexplicably the next 12hrs drifted by without a touch! Just plenty of chatter with Dad about all and sundry, 2pm on Thursday we called time on the Wharfe and headed to the Aire where we hopped between sections of water (free waters) where we failed to register a bite but a lot of the good areas were taken by anglers who looked like they were camped out for ages with the view of catching plenty.

Mid 7.

 After calling time on the Aire we set about just getting Dad a fish or two on the Friday, so we drove to our destination and set up camp with the view to starting the next morning.