Saturday 4 July 2015

Barbel Before Breakfast


It has been two long weeks since my opening week of fishing and I was gagging to get to the river. I was on the riverbank at 6am and due to the rain last night the water had coloured up, I couldn't go fish spotting as planned - I had to rely on swims I'd spotted them in before.

It was three or four swims before I had a hit on the rolled meat - a barbel, only about 1lb but that didn't matter I just wanted something to put a bend in the rod. Then they really went on the feed...

I stayed about 2 hours longer than I had planned. But they were up for it - including one barbel which nailed the bait as I wound it in and one that swirled at it as it hit the water. A grand total of 15 barbel and 4 chub. No monsters, the best going 6lb 7oz (above), but the action was hectic.

It didn't all go to plan - I lost 6 barbel to hook-pulls, two of them looked like bigger fish - can't really complain though.

Barbel went 1lb, 5lb, 1lb, 3lb, 6lb 7oz, 4lb, 3lb, 2lb, 1lb, 3lb, 3½lb, 1lb, 4½lb, 1½lb and 1¾lb. Total of 41lb 11oz for the records.

Quick report today - time to escape to the farm...

4 comments:

  1. Damn fine days fishing I'd say.

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    1. Just what I needed - was tempted to stay and see just how many I could manage in a day. Feel I should be trying to track down a bigger one, but it's quantity over size at the moment...

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    2. Sometimes just getting a bunch of bites is as much fun as landing the bigger fish, I've had days where catching Jacks on nearly every cast is more fun than fishing all day for that one big shark.

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    3. Yeah with limited time I'd rather be into a few fish than stalking a big one. Hopefully stumble across some bigger fish while I'm doing it (and hopefully they will stay on next time).

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