Barbel bashing - the boy's back in town

My plans for the summer didn't involve barbel other than perhaps the odd quick session but I had made the decision that they were probably the most likely species to fit into my current lifestyle, the reservoir is very weedy at the moment which makes the breaming a problem and I don't have time to travel south to my other bream/carp water, everything I said in my post about the summer's plans had gone to pot and it was time for a rescue mission.

Monday the 6th of August

While bailiffing on the Saturday I had a look at a couple of potential stalking swims and it fired me up to have a go, unfortunatly on arriving at the Soar after work on the Monday the river had coloured up significantly and scuppered that idea. Of course I could fish on blind in the knowledge that fish were in the vicinity but that wasn't what I wanted, I've fished the area plenty of times and only the sight of fish feeding on my baits would give me the excitement I wanted, time for a rethink. This year I have joined a new club to me that covers a good stretch of the river Derwent and I decided to head off up there after work.

My lack of recent angling soon became apparent as I found myself a big sweaty mess after walking a few hundred yards upstream, what the hell was I doing carrying a chair, big rucksack and two rods on a reccy session, a sure sign of being out of the swing. In fact to be honest I almost felt a little out of place being there, it's strange how a break can leave you feeling so distant from something so familiar. I didn't find much to interest me within the limit of my self inflicted distance restriction so I headed back towards the van where I had dropped some pellet onto some likely looking runs with good visibility. I spent a good hour alternating between the spots just looking but didn't spot so much as a chub, it was decision time and the one I made was to head for an area I know well on another ticket, I just wasn't equipped to search out new areas.

A few miles downstream I had the choice of many likely looking swims, I have fished the area quite extensively though have only had a very brief dabble for the barbel, my time being spent after chub and perch which nevertheless gave me a good knowledge of where the barbel could be, my choice was a large far bank tree which overhung the water by a considerable distance and looked perfect. With time now getting on each rod was fished with a small pva mesh bag of pellet attached and no other free bait introduced, one hookbait being an apple cored boilie and the other a small pellet, both attached to a Suffix Heavy Skin hooklink and my trusty size 6 Drennan boilie hooks. I've been using those hooks since I guess the early 90's for carp fishing and when I started barbelling they were the natural choice, I fully understand that I'm tempting fate here but I have yet to pull one of those out of a barbel, the hook holds are superb. I'm currently using the standard black version as I bought a load cheap, the continentals hold their points much more and so don't need changing so often but otherwise both are just as good.

Within half an hour the upstream rod went over at lightning speed and my first fish for weeks was hooked, unfortunately within seconds it was also lost when the hooklink parted on something, not a good start.I re-rigged that rod and flicked it back out under the branches a little further downstream of it's original position. Another hour passed and this time the other rod was away, the first part of the fight was just hit and hold, cupping the spool and walking backwards when possible to draw the fish from its sanctuary without giving an inch, then once the pressure had taken its toll I could relax a little and enjoy the fight mid river. The result wasn't a massive fish but it was a lovely welcome back which did me the world of good and I was right back into my fishing in an instant, great stuff.