End of Season Review.

 

 The 2024/25 season was certainly one of the quickest, I can not believe its over already but it was pretty good! 

 Highlights of the season are fewer than I would have hoped for along with only one new personal best set.

 My Spring angling was not easy but topped my Bream campaign with a 15lb 10oz specimen PB, I had a fair few doubles too in the aftermath but the 15lb barrier was always my target. 

 The summer seemed to come and go very quickly but the capture of my first 3lb river Rudd was most certainly the cherry on top, there was a couple of cracking back-ups too but barring that it wasn't until early September that things on the Barbel front kicked off.

 That trip up to the Nene in early September bought an end to a 6 trip drought when a 12lb 8oz torpedo slipped up as darkness fell amongst large swathes of cabbages where I found a gravel run which no doubt is used by the fish as a highway between areas, but the Barbel I had the following evening off the Soar was certainly not expected but sometimes thats how angling goes! 

 To be cradling a 12lb 9oz Soar Barbel was much more than I could have dreamt but as I said the angling universe works in strange ways. Rivers number 25 and 26 had been completed inside 24hrs!

 Next up was the Wye, a river that certainly gives up its fish, just not big ones, early October that all changed, when that rod went over around 10/11pm I knew it was a big fish, yes it only just made the cut but they all count! 10lb 1oz and river number 27 had been completed.

 For the majority of the autumn and winter I was on the tools and only fished a couple times, some nice Grayling were caught and Chub, it wasn't until recently on the Dorset Stour that I finally had another proper result when a day spent hunkered down in foul weather was rewarded, not only was it river number 28 completed but weighing 15lb 6ozs it was the 4th river I have had a 15lb+ Barbel off of, a figure I want to increase over the duration of this challenge as a sub-plot.

 And the STATS are in....

 Sessions - 20

 Blanks - 12

 Barbel Caught - 18

 Doubles - 4

 Mileage - 4120

 Only 20 sessions for Barbel in 9 months, now that is poultry! Next season I shall have to do more! and the majority of that was the Kentish Stour.

The Dying Days.

 

 Well, the lead up to the end of the season didn't go as planned, unfortunately the weather wasn't great but still wanted to try. First off I planned to get myself up to Yorkshire for a go at the Y.Rother, a river I had purchased a ticket for back in the summer but it wasn't until 7th of March that I finally got up there! 

 203 miles of tarmac had to be covered and it was my new vans inaugural journey! sadly my trip ended up with a blank on that river, I arrived at 4pm and fished until 4am but had one little chub wrap and the temps had dropped so much that my confidence had ebbed away and opted to leave there at 0430 and yes there were loads of other options such as the Swale, Idle, Y.Ouse, Y.Derwent, Wharfe and the Aire but the conditions up there were very different to the south, so opted to drive back 203 miles to home, not a wink of sleep for 39 hrs, once in overdrive I can do long spells without kip but I do pay for it later on as when I do get to sleep and finally wake up I suffer with really strong headaches where I sleep so deep.

It's hard industrial past on full show.

Not seen waste as bad as this before, eye opening
amount of plastic littering the trees.

 However, before I did that I drove to a secluded woodland in Kent as I had gotten wind of a very rare "legitimate" small population Large Tortoiseshell butterflies, for me it was one I needed as I look to complete my list, as I ambled around I bumped into Terry Hearn who was also searching for the LT so we had a chat about things fishy and fluttery and after 4hrs of searching we came across what we were looking for "species number 53" was in the bag (not literally), success! Now with the gear in the van and a 20 min drive across the beautiful Kent countryside could I finally get that KS Barbel I so badly want?

YESSSS!!!! Finally got to photograph one, lifer.

 Nope.....of course I didn't....again. But, I did see something else that was mind blowing, 3 Beavers! just 20 metres away from where I was fishing, I couldn't quite believe it. Oh, and I also had a nice chub of 5lb 9oz and 3 Bream to about 4lb.

5.9 Chevvy.

Barbel' friend, shame no Barbel seem to exist here :) 

Beaver dental work

ditto

yikes 😳

 After that on March 12/13th I arranged to take my Dad down to the Dorset Stour as we looked to go for a big end of season Chub and Roach, I knew of areas where they were present so we targeted them, another stroke of misfortune meant that neither of us caught across both days! It was not easy at all, but at least we had a good catch up! 

 Last day of the season was spent with Brian who I knew was in London owing to his hospital commitments, with that I opted to fish super light and went about searching for fish in any nook and cranny they may have been held up in, by the end of it I had landed 10 glistening chalk stream Barbel to 7lb 2oz and Brian managed 10 also to 7lb on the button, it was good fun and a far cry from the rigours of my 40 Rivers Challenge! 

7lb 2oz, best of 10 😜

Who says you can't celebrate a draw!

 Roll on June 16th, we go again!

Dorset Stour Double, That's A Wrap!!

 

 The stars align once again.

 They say with age comes wisdom and in this case that sentiment rings true. Weeks on end of cold nights and near frigid daytime temps had my Barbel challenge sidelined, in fact I've barely fished at all. However, once you have gained enough experience you know when the time is right and watching the 5-day forecast likes a hawk for weeks noticed that from Thursday the temps were due to shoot up owing to a nice stiff SW/S system sweeping the country, that could only mean one thing. Barbel!

 Constant water temps on the Dorset Stour of 4.5c to 6.5c (around 6 weeks) I knew any increase in air temp would translate to warmer river temps, I had to go! So late Wednesday evening I got the gear ready, loaded the car and at 0430 the following morning I was on my way down to Dorset, I just had to be there.

 I arrived to find no one else fishing which was bit of a surprise so had the choices of areas to target, but knew roughly where I wanted to go. I got myself set up with two static rods as the wind was pretty strong ( between 18-35mph ) and driving / horizontal rain all day, so trotting was out of the question as was rolling meat. I armed my two 1.75tc Drennan Barbel specialist rods and fished one with a big chunk of garlic luncheon meat and the other with the ever faithful 15mm source with loads of crushed boilee and a few 4mm pellet in PVA netting to create a scent trail to entice anything that fancied feeding.

 Roll on 6hrs, patience was starting to wear thin when I got a bite on the boilee rod which finally went which resulted in a 4lb+ Chub, that gave me confidence fish were beginning to feed, so I opted to stay put and started to increase my PVA contents to hopefully spur more fish into feeding, an hour later bite number two came along in the shape of a porky 5lb 2oz Chub, a nice fish and once again proved to me that there were feeding fish and all day the water temp continued to increase, 7.25c when I arrived by 1pm it was 8.8c, it all pointed in the right direction but those were my only two fish in the daylight hours, but if I was going to get a Barbel the hours of darkness I felt would be my best chance....

 Dusk came and went without incident, then around 7pm I got a couple of taps on the rod tip ( boilee rod ) that were out of sync with the wind whistling through and buffeting the rods, that peaked my interest and I remained vigilant, a minute later it did it again, this time my thoughts were that this fish was hooked and just sat there on the bottom totally unaware of its mistake, I picked up the rod and held it and felt the line where I felt a couple of subtle plucks, that was enough for me, I checked the clutch and bent into it, fish on!

 A heavy weight was immediately felt and a steady mid river battle ensued for 3/4 minutes before I got it on the surface, when I saw it my suspicions were confirmed, it was bloody huge! with that she bore back down to the bottom and continued a dogged battle, no frills, no erratic runs, just using its weight against the flow and knowing how big it was I took my time and allowed it to tick off line when it wanted, I wasn't going to rush this fish! 

 Around 8mins into the fight she came into full view again about 5ft out where I shipped the net out and my Dorset Stour quest had come to an climatic end, what a way to come to conclude my DS efforts, this was a big fish and when I lifted it up I honestly thought my personal best of 15.12 was in serious trouble!

River number 28 ✅ WOW.

 On the digitals she weighed an extremely pleasing 15lb 6ozs, alas my PB remained, for now. What a special fish caught in foul conditions but just had that gut feeling something was going to happen, that 230 mile round trip was well worth the effort, the early start, the rubbish conditions were all forgotten, this was special! 

 On to river number 29, can I reach that milestone of 30 completed rivers before mid-march arrives? I will give it everything I've got to make it happen.

 Video of the release -----) 15.6 Release

Back on the Dorset Stour.

 

 It's been a couple of years since I last visited this big fish mecca and it's been too long really, on Friday I put that right. The plan was made a couple weeks ago and that was to do three days down there. 

 My approach was to fish the float during the day and have a sleeper rod for Barbel in the margins with a big lump of meat, the issue with this plan was all of this was before I'd seen the river and found out the conditions were actually pretty poor. The colour was very heavy with no more than 3 inches and trotting maggots with that lack of visibility was always going to be hard, arguably the point that was even more challenging was the river 24hrs before I arrived was 11.4c and when I arrived on Friday morning it had slumped to 7.4c! sudden drops in temp, especially that sharp are never good omens for targeting Barbel. 

 Now I have got all the excuses out of the way as to why I wouldn't or probably shouldn't catch a Barbel I went and did just that, much against the odds. Having persevered with trotting maggots for 4hrs without a bite I opted to switch to two static rods but seeing as I had lumped out a pint or two of maggots I suspected if anything was feeding on them then I might stand a chance of picking it/ them up with it plonked on the deck! 10 white maggots impaled on a short hair and a PVA bag crammed full of white maggots was cast out just behind a dead/dying weed bed and that was the rod that stormed off within 40mins, my hunch paid off this time around and it was a brilliant take and fight in the pacy flow.

D.Stour 7.13 winter powerhouse.

 My heart understandably was racing as it felt like a decent fish out in the flow, but when it came up out of the murk I could see it wasn't a double but I could not be disappointed, I was just thankful to catch one in the conditions to be fair. Plus as it turned out that was to be my only excitement of the day and in-fact the whole trip, as I had weighed up my options given the fact the river hadn't risen much more than half a degree and the torrential rain gave way to clear starry skies and the temperature plummeted, by 11pm I had had enough and did not fancy my chances on improving on the one fish, I will return soon enough when conditions improve. Just thankful I didn't blank and drove back home and in bed by 1am.

 Lesson learned and this 40 Rivers Challenge is all about learning and pitting my whits against not just Barbel, but also the river that I'm tackling and the conditions which during the winter are often touch and go, sometimes the decision to go and fish is one of impatience but given how few my chances have been this season I had to at least try. Maybe next time I will come away with a prize worthy of the efforts put in. 

Running Out of Time.

 

 Its been a trip that was well overdue, the Dorset Stour and an Itchen return were finally back in my plans and with an upturn in conditions it was hopefully going to be a successful trip which I was making with Brian (of Pike Blog)...3 days of bog talk and blanking was in-store for us both!

 We started on the Dorset Stour as conditions were on the up after a cold spell that would have meant sluggish sport, within an hour of fishing on the float I had conjured up 4 bites, losing one that was a good Chub in the six pound bracket, missing one and landing two. Not the Barbel I was after but fish all the same, Brian set about Piking and had some success with the Jack's but the big girls eluded him on day one.

 My sleeper rod during the day showed little signs of life and as the sun set and the night sky provided wonderment I hoped that dark would give the Barbel more confidence and setup using one rod on the meat and the other with boilie and paste. Within a couple of hours the tentative knocks began and soon enough a fish hung itself, unfortunately for me it was a Bream of 7lb+ not what I was after but a fish I guess. 

Settled in for the evening/night session.

 The next bite didn't come until 0430, for me that was a bad time as I was having a little snooze and the rod melted off, in a daze I got to the rod but the culprit had dropped the bait and I struck thin air...bummer! Moral of that story is don't snooze, it'll happen then.

Into action!

Eat like Kings!

 The next morning we awoke to a freezing cold morning that I slept outside in cozy in my suit wedged into my chair, my feet like blocks of ice, fingers immoveable, I needed some early morning sport! I suspect overnight the temps dropped to about 0c and I really felt it. Because of that the sport on the wednesday was pretty sluggish and apart from three average sized Chub I could not make anything happen. A change of section would hopefully breath new life into the trip for us both, unfortunately this wasn't to happen for me as my only enquiry over 6 hours was a very attentive Eel that kept coming back for my ledgered meat, and after an hour I gave up and we made the drive down to Southampton to fish the Itchen where I hoped to find a large Barbel to check off this river that has been very tough and having packed up the following morning we were Bourne bound...

One last hurrah, before heading off to the Itchen.

....quite the marathon, but yet again, I remained Barbelless and firmly with my tail between my legs I reluctantly called it a day, three days, two nights with very very little to show for my efforts. Maybe another time aye!