Life In The Blackwater.

 

 Only taken a trillion visits to catch another R.Blackwater, this river really is a joy to be beside, the nature present is as good as you could ask to see anywhere in the country, the Barbel however have been really challenging as most of you who regularly follow my ramblings will know. When you do catch they are stunning fish and always pristine, but with the Otters ever present how long will fish like this be around for? 

 A typical trip unfolded where I opted to move around and fished just about every good looking spot I could, most have never yielded a touch but this trip just proved why you should always at least try for 20/30 mins, this beauty wasn't weighed but deserved a mat shot and quipped in my mind how many months will it take to find another.

Stunning Barbel around 4-5lb

 Anyway, I'll take what I can on this ever more difficult river before a double is found and landed. 

Pastures New and Old Foes.

 

 Since the R.Anker had thrown up the greatest of all fish I had already made the decision to sleep for the night before making the journey to the R.Dove which is was once again going to be a first, a river I have long since had designs on fishing but never got there, so with the Anker being around half hour north it is fairly close, having never fished the Dove, it was once again going to be a reccy trip.

 Once I had finally found the river after a call to Ade who has been hugely supportive this last few weeks I set about making the long walk to the top boundary to then have a good look and see what I was faced with.

 After the recent rains the Dove was up a bit and heavily coloured, this I felt for stalking which I had in mind was not ideal so I very quickly decided to take on a static approach and set about fishing each good looking spot for around 45mins and then move. I didn't realise that the Dove had Crayfish and they were everywhere! I could not get away from them, so after 6 swims and a good few hours I walked my gear to the centre of the fishery and then went rolling meat, amazingly within a couple minutes I had a brief follow from a Barbel about 7lb which looked like it was going to take the meat and bailed out at the last moment, the fish then drifted out of sight under a bush and regardless of how hard I tried to get that fish to commit I simply could not manage it. 

 For the rest of the day I moved around and feeding lightly I hoped I would come across a Barbel, unfortunately that did not happen and around 10pm I packed up. 3hrs 50min drive back home, but a blank on the Dove didn't matter a jot, that Anker success was enough to let me forget the rest.

 A few days later I made my way over to the Blackwater to carry on my pursuit of a double which unfortunately was met with the same level of nothingness which I am constantly subjected to on this particular river and two days back I made another trip again with an outside chance to make it happen but all I did was continue to remove Crayfish which I seem to be good at that, but very little else is happening on there, even Carp, Chub and Bream seem to be completely missing. I really do feel like the window on a Blackwater double is closing, the Otters are having a profound effect, even if they aren't eating all the fish their presence is moving stocks around so fast I can't get lucky and find them, not through the want of trying. But one thing that is true is that I will continue to keep trying, I won't give up on there, not just yet.

River Anker Double, That's A Wrap!!!

 

 My season just seems to be going from strength to strength, last seasons total of two completed rivers had been equalled before this incredible result, now...here's how it unfolded.

 Following on from my last visit a couple of weeks ago much has happened, that stuff that falls from the sky (rain) decided to put in an appearance and my god we have needed it, when I arrived on the Anker at around 2pm I could very quickly see that the river was about a foot higher and carrying some colour, stalking fish was now out of the question but felt it would offer feeding fish some additional cover during the daylight hours, I opted for a pellet approach as I so often do on smaller rivers, robin red pellets 4mm, 6mm and 8mm in small golf ball sized PVA bags and 8mm on the hair.

 I'm not sure how much of this made a difference but this is how my approach differed. Initially my hair when I tied it was quite long as I had misjudged the required length and was long enough to accommodate 3x 8mm pellets rather than the 2x I normally use. I fished with this setup for around 3hrs within a bite in a couple of swims so I opted to strip that rig down and tie a similar rig with a shorter hair so the 2x 8mm pellets were butting up against the bend of the hook, this presentation I do prefer more, subtle difference but may have made all the difference.

 Fishing a crease just off the far bank flow I placed my 2oz lead and left it as long as I could to allow any feeding fish the opportunity to find the bait, over the course of a couple of hours I topped the swim up with more pellet as there is a healthy population of silvers and Chub so I couldn't imagine the pellet would have been around long and with that consistent flow of free offerings going in I hoped I would bring something upstream from a very fishy looking near bank cluster of reed and far bank bushes where the water drops away from 4ft to around 7/8ft, the perfect holding area for a Barbel or two.

 During my time there the fishing was halted briefly owing to some really powerful showers which would have made the remainder of my visit very uncomfortable so Ade and I hopped into the car to seek shelter as we could see the storm creeping ever closer across the flatlands, enough time to hot foot it to the car, both times with just seconds to spare! 

Just one of many super looking spots.

 Ade arrived shortly after I arrived and we sat back chatting, thankfully towards the evening the clouds slowly broke up enough so that the threat of rain abated. Around 1910 Ade opted to head off home to grab dinner and no sooner he got half way home my rod gently tapped twice to alert me to the presence of something, then out of nothing the rod tip slammed around violently and the centrepin went into meltdown, the vortex whipped up by whatever had just picked up my bait was huge, the brutal power of this fish saw me simply trying limit the amount of line this fish took, more than 30 metres of line was stripped before I managed to get a modicum of control, my heart was in my mouth because I was praying it was a Barbel and not a Carp, the sheer power was startling.

 Once I had the fish turned and slowly coming upstream I still didn't know what it was, that was until it rolled in front of me, my eyes couldn't believe what I was seeing, it was very big! I've had some very big Barbel in my time but this was pretty special, however I had to remain vigilant as this fish still had plenty more in the tank and for another five minutes or so this fish lunged, wallowed, lunged and wallowed some more, over the cord of the net twice too and back out didn't do my nerves any bloody good at all but on the third time of asking I finally got the reward for my efforts in the confines of my net, it was big! 

 A few minutes later Ade arrived to the sight of me punching the air in jubilation, but how big was she? 

 I didn't unhook her or lift her or anything until Ade arrived as I wanted to rest the fish after such an epic battle, when Ade did get himself ready and I laid out all my kit, set up the camera, wet the sling and mat I was ready, or was I? When I began lifting her up and out of the river it dawned on me this fish was even bigger than I first thought, the depth of it was really impressive for a late-August Barbel.

 When it was laid on the mat we both really got see it all and that was when Ade said to me, "That's a river record fish right there James", I had no reason to think otherwise, it was very big. I lifted the scales with them facing Ade and he read off 17lb 7ozs (included the sling) and I was in shock, of course deducting the weight of the sling (11ozs) off the total she settled on 16lb 12ozs! Indeed a new River Anker record, all recorded and indeed confirmed by Ade this fish is the old record which was set in 2022 at 16lb 6oz. 

 I was simply speechless, these moments in angling come round once in a blue moon and amongst all of that it sets me a new personal best for the species which has been in situ since October 2020! What a way to do it. Simply magical. Once that was done a quick couple of photos were taken and then got in the river to have one last moment before she vanished once again into obscurity, hopefully not for so long this time, a new personal best and a new river record for a river I'd only visited once before, that's what dreams are made of.

New River Anker Record - 16lb 12ozs

Magnificent!

And of course, that is the 33rd river I have had a double figure Barbel from, the target is really and truly in sight.