Back to the barbel - A tale of three rivers

It's fair to say that over the years I have pretty much ignored barbel during the colder months which is to some extent a bit odd as without a doubt the species is at its very best weight wise once summer is past. The thing is that although I do class myself as a specimen angler weight is not, and never will be, the full story when it comes down to my enjoyment of angling. There is nothing I love more than watching fish feeding around my baited rig, it is angling at its most intense. Throw a beautiful stretch of secluded river and a handful of hard fighting barbel into the equation and you have my kind of barbel fishing, pure heaven. However this year I decided that I would change things and when suitable conditions arrived I would have a crack at a whiskers or two during the colder months. Too many times in the past I've stubbornly ignored what I knew well to be perfect barbel weather as I had my heart set on other species, and after all a break from the routine to try something different makes fishing so much more enjoyable.

River Derwent chub - on a mission for a monster

I always used to class chub as my favourite species. I think that goes back to my youth when a bonus chub would be the highlight of a days fishing and at that time a good Soar chub would be 2lb plus. I remember well when my Dad caught a monster of over 3lb's several years after we started fishing the river and that really was something pretty special to us. I first cracked the 3lb barrier on the River Wreake near Sysonby, I guess in the mid 1990's, and I was chuffed to bits with that. I can still remember the swim and the drop back bite that showed that my piece of flake had been picked up. That was, in fact, the first time I had ever tried upstream legering, a technique that became a firm favourite years later.

My brother with a typical Soar chub from our childhood

My dad with a Soar monster!

River Soar zander - into the unknown

For years I have known that the River Soar held a few zander, odd reports came in of fish caught accidentally by pike anglers but to be honest they were pretty few and far between. The thinking was that these were escapee's from Frisby pit which lies a considerable distance away next to the River Wreake, which then joins the Soar. When I became more involved in the running of Loughborough Soar Angling Society and spent more time walking the banks I started to pick up a few more reports and my interest was fired up. By no means was the river heavily populated with the species but they were there alright and I now had confirmation of at least four fish in double figures having been banked, spread across virtually the whole length of the clubs waters, it would be rude not to have a go wouldn't it.

A stunning piece of water full of features

 

After my week of carp fishing I decided that I'd have a week after those zeds, I was still very much in flitting mode angling wise which can work against you in some respects but so what, it's good fun and nice to have that variety, the campaign fishing can come later.

River Derwent barbel - double figure diversion

A week or so into the river season I took a few bits of stalking kit down to a local stretch of the river Soar and spent a couple of hours wandering about. Half a dozen or so spots were baited and observed in turn but I didn't see a whisker of barbel and so the rod was never assembled let alone cast. To some that seems like madness when I could have been in with a chance of a bite just sitting somewhere and fishing blind but sometimes it's the method that appeals to me rather than the result and I do love watching fish on the bait.

Another week or so passed with me having no intention of fishing the river, tench were firmly in priority spot number one. Then I succumbed to a quick session on the Derwent due to getting rained off work. I blanked on the stretch that I first visited but the seed was sown and I couldn't resist nipping to another favourite spot where a whisker of 8 1/2lb's saved the day. Better still I watched the fish hoovering up the free offerings before the rod tip heading downstream at a hundred miles an hour caught my attention.

River Soar chub fishing - using my loaf

Although bitterley cold the weather had at last become dry, for a while at least, and the rivers were finally starting to get close to normal levels. Tuesday had seen me head for the River Derwent after the perch but a blank was the result, the water was holding a bit more colour than I would have liked and still a little bit too much flow, the stripeys would have to wait.

The two rod perch trick, watching tip and float at the same time, efficient but fruitless this time

The forecast for Wednesday was bright and sunny with temperatures possibly just creeping above freezing point at best but I've never known that to stop the chub feeding and that's what I fancied fishing for. The Soar was to be the venue and I am usually confident of a bite or two on my local river. I did consider picking up a few pints of maggots but I wasn't sure just how much water was on, it wouldn't take much to make maggot fishing very difficult and so I settled on a bucket of mashed bread with another loaf for hookbaits, a lump of cheese paste went into the bag as a reserve.

I arrived at the swim I fancied at about ten am and after putting my kit down threw in three good hand fulls of mash straight away, once that job was done I could take my time setting up knowing that the swim was building. I had bought one of the Marco Cortesi centrepins a couple of years ago, more because it was a bargain than anything else to be honest but it certainly does seem to be a cracking reel for the money. The daft thing is that it had yet to see water and I thought it really was time that I had a go with it, there was no wind to speak of so that wouldn't cause me any grief so why not. I rigged up a 2 1/2 swan shot chubber with the 4lb mainline straight through to a size 6. A few practice casts were always going to be needed but a few ended up being about twenty and no matter what I tried I wasn't getting the range required to send the float along the far bank tree's, there was no point in fishing short of the cover so the pin came off and on went a fixed spool, the pin can wait until I fish a bit closer in.

With the trusty Carbomatic now in place and a dose of Mucilin applied to keep the line floating I was ready to go. The first few trots down were ignored but I gradually increased the depth until the float vanished after a few yards on one cast and a fish was on. I don't float fish anywhere near as much as I should and I tend to forget how much better the fight is without a feeder or weight on the line, the chub wasn't much more than 3lb's in weight but was good sport nevertheless.

A little un for starters

The next cast produced another fish proving that they were hanging near the bottom and wouldn't come up even for a tasty lump of breadflake., This one was a bit bigger and after returning it well upstream I introduced more mashed bread and sat down for twenty minutes to rest the swim. A few more casts gave me two more chub with the best 4 1/2lb's odd and again the swim was rested after being baited. I watched a fox work it's way across the frozen field, scratching away for anything it could find no doubt in the harsh conditions and it occurred to me that being caught isn't actually too bad a price to pay for a fish when it has had a good feed thrown in for it's trouble.

The fish were now definately starting to become a bit wary after four of their mates had gone missing and it took a good half dozen runs through apiece to bag the next two, the last one coming to a cast as far over as I dare let the float run. I knew I was starting to push my luck at this stage particularly as I had to limit the session to four hours but I gave it another rest and managed to scrape out one more small chub before deciding to move upstream for the last hour to fish the tip.

My favourite banker swim on the stretch was the obvious place to visit but I knew that it might not be a viable prospect with the extra water on and I was proved right. The chub in that swim hang right over the far side in a big back eddy, the main flow pushes through the inside and even with the rod as high as possible it wouldn't be possible to hold the line out of the turbulence resulting in the rig being constantly dragged out of place. There was one more possibility and I heaved the rucksack back on and trudged on upstream.

That swim was looking more like it, a few surface boils were visible on the near side of the crease but I was sure that I could get away with an medium sized open ended feeder. First cast resulted in a great big drop back bite and a good old scrap under the rod tip before a fish of maybe 4 1/4lb's was in the net.

 
It took a while to get the next indication but eventually I landed chub number nine before stopping for ten minutes to chat to a bloke walking the field who told me about the otter he had seen in his swim at the weekend. That is getting to be a very familiar tale this season and I wonder how much longer we have left before we notice the barbel population start to suffer. I had said that I was going to hang out for fish number ten but time was running short and I ended up bottling out on that one, nevertheless I'd had a cracking days sport when not many would have bothered to have left the house.

Trent zander fishing

Tuesday the 2nd of October

With my limited attempts at banking a trent zander so far yielding a big fat zero myself and Steve decided to have a session on the river in an area that Steve knew had reasonable form for the species.

The River Trent is a bit of a strange one for me, I've lived within easy reach of the river for all of my life yet I pay it little attention even though as a kid I fished it with my Dad and Grandad long before I set foot on the banks of the River Soar. Once I got into angling in a big way then the Soar was the nearest easily accessible venue to me, it was even reachable by pushbike and so naturally that is where I gravitated to and spent a lot of time over the next few years. We still made the occaisional visit to the Trent and had some good days sports even though in retrospect we were woefully undertackled, I had no hesitation in lobbing a 2oz blockend feeder out on a nine foot Silstar picker rod, god only knows how it survived the experience! Since my interest in river fishing was re-kindled in the mid 2000's I have been well aware that the Trent offered some very good fishing and large fish to boot but somehow the intimacy of the smaller rivers holds me firmly in its grasp and the big brother remains very much on the back burner which is a shame really but as always there's so much I would like to do and so little time.

As is often the way I manged to get my timing bang on as it started spitting with rain as I loaded the van at 3pm and by the time I hit the motorway it was peeing down. Steve had arrived just before me and after a quick chat I plumped for a swim downstream of him that looked very much the part consisting of a large willow protruding from the near bank which created a substantial slack and of course a corresponding crease.

The first job was to snatch a few bleak for bait which wasn't too much trouble, in fact the hardest thing is usually making myself stop as I do enjoy watching the float dip no matter how small the culprit however the rain soon told me that I really should retreat to the umbrella and get the zander rods sorted out. In preparation for the session I had spoken to someone very knowledgeable on big river zeds and was very grateful for his advice, in simple terms hit anything that might possibly be a bite as they don't hang around and don't neccesarily give much indication. This all seems quite alien to me to be honest and I can't claim to have been very confident but confidence comes with experience and you don't get that if you don't try so it was in for a penny and all that. Half a bleak was hooked onto a single treble on each rod, a 3oz running lead sat above the trace and that was the extent of the rig, one bait was positioned on the crease and one slightly further out into the flow. The rods were set up with the tips high, Delkims on high sensitivity and isotopes fixed to the rod tips ready to show the slightest tap.

I sat back listening to the rain pattering down on my nylon mushroom and gazed at the swim, it really did look spot on for most species, a good depth close in next to that tree screamed perch, chub on that crease, pike in the slack, zander anywhere?   Steve popped down to see what was happening and reported no signs of toothy critters in his swim yet but as dusk was approaching there was plenty of hope left yet and we both setlled down to concentrate on our fishing. I had a few false alarms cause by bits of weed and debris coming down in the flow though they were just slow steady pulls that were pretty easy to interpret however an hour or so into dark the left hand rod tip started to tremble slightly, maybe only by an inch or so but it looked suspicious and I struck, though into thin air. The bait was missing and I was almost certain that it had been a genuine bite, Steve agreed that it was typical of zander and that was a start, on my other attempts after the species I haven't had a whisper, that though was that, not another sniff was had before we called it a night at around 9pm, failed again!

If you are still reading my ramblings you are probably starting to get a bit bored by now as I haven't caught anything of note for quite a while, I could of just brushed over these sessions of course but that wouldn't tell the full story, you have to take the rough with the smooth in this game but every tough session is one nearer to a result and I might just have something in store for my next blog, you never know!

River Soar Perch - Are you following me?

Sunday the 29th of September

I managed to persuade 'er indoors that it would be a good idea if I got a few hours fishing in up to dusk and with the wind yet again blowing a gale the reservoir was not an option that appealed. I've known about a stretch of the Soar local to me throwing up some decent fish in recent years and thought I would give it a go.

On arriving on the bank I was almost blown over, along with far too much rain haven't we had some winds this year? I could see that a reed lined bay along to my left was slightly sheltered and it was an area that I had always fancied so it was a no brainer. The tip rod was set up with a blockend feeder and I started to get some bait down into the eight foot deep margin.

It didn't take long for the trusty old worm to attract some finned diners and the tip was soon doing a perchy dance before I bent it into a little fella of a few ounces. The next cast produced his stunt double, and the next, and the next, it seemed that it was my week to be on the babies but I never find fishing the tip boring and was quite happy to keep at them with the hope that maybe big mamma would arrive later to see what all of the commotion was about.

Par for the course

I did catch something different to break the routine but it wasn't a happy occurence, I've been well aware of the red signal crays present in the stretch for some time and have suffered missing hookbaits when carp fishing  over the last few years but I had never seen one on the bank, a twitchy little bite changed all that and in came my first Soar "crab". I really do hate the damn things with a vengeance, they have been in the waterway for a fair few years now but only time will tell if they will become more of a problem. One thing that is for sure is that they are spreading fast and sooner or later they will complete their occupation of the Soar and make it to the Trent, from there the potential for spread is huge.

No matter how hard you reckon you look you won't beat a size 11 on the bonce!

The fading light didn't bring an increase in perch size and by that stage I wasn't really surprised, no little perch with any sense whatsoever would hang around if a big one arrived and as I was constantly catching babies the results told a tale.

River Soar barbel wanted - apply within

Just a quick catch up post to fill in after the double I caught in the last entry.

With the weather miraculously becoming stable for the longest period in months I had to make the most of it and get some work done hence my fishing sessions were short and not as often as I would have liked.

I persevered with the area that gave me the double for several more sessions but couldn't buy a bite for love nor money bar a rogue chub which I find a bit strange after the quick result on my first visit, buit that's fishing for you.I did have a return trip to the stretch of Soar that produced the nine pounder but on a bailiffing visit I found that it was seeing quite a bit of attention and so that idea was put on the back burner.

Last Tuesday I decided that I felt like getting a bite or two and so headed up to the Derwent, despite fishing a very reliable swim the going was tough and it was down to one feisty seven pounder to save the blank, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Wednesday evening saw me back on the Soar for one last go at the barbel as I had made the decision to have a change of species. I made a very long walk to a swim that I hadn't fished for several years, it was always a cracking looking spot but it now looks even better with a long line of tangled woodwork providing a five star barbel hotel.

If I was a barbel I'd live there

No sooner had I settled down to watch the rod tips when I had a nasty thought, I'd left my headtorch on the kitchen worktop ready to pack, it was still there, that cut my session down to about two hours. A bream of probably five pounds showed up just before dusk set in and that was my lot, I made the long walk back to the van feeling a bit dejected that I'd cocked up the last session of my mini campaign.

Nearly home time

River Soar barbel - double figure result

Tuesday August the 28th

After Saturday's result I quite naturally headed back to the same stretch after work, three swims had received a small amount of bait for the previous five days bar one and I was feeling pretty confident of another barbel.

My starting point was the swim I caught the 9lber from and I quietly swung out two rigs with small bags of pellet hooked on, no need for any other free offerings. Within a few minutes one of the rod tops pulled over and I was into a fish, no cigar this time though as a bream came kiting in, not what I really want to see after a spell of prebaiting but never mind it could be a one off. In fact it was a one off, two chub came to the net in the next thirty minutes though and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to work out that in fact my baiting had probably worked against me rather than in my favour.

Barbel kit

Those fish told me it was time to move and I made my way to the most upstream of my chosen spots, again it wasn't long before the rod tops were knocking away and eventually despite the long hair rigs that I use with the intention of trying to avoid hooking chub one was hooked and made far too much disturbance for the shallow swim, I had to move again.

The last of my three baited spots was on the way back to the parking area and I had to pass the first swim I had fished on the way so I decided to give it another quick try. Yes you guessed it, another chub was hooked in short time but as I was playing it in it suddenly shot into a shallow near bank bay and there was a big swirl followed by a shower of scales floating down though the water in front of me. I scooped up the chub which would of weighed about three pounds and looked down in astonishment at the state of it. This looked like no pike attach I have ever seen, no obvious jaw marks just one flank of the fish from dorsal to tail root virtually stripped of skin with some of the loose skin actually hanging down beyond the tail. I really wasn't sure if it could be a pike at all and am still none the wiser, answers on a postcard please. Whatever it was the fish was a mess and I left it on the reeds while I went to find a suitable piece of wood to dispatch it, it obviously wasn't as bad as I thought though as by the time I returned it had found its way back into the river.

Well there certainly wasn't any point at all in recasting and so I moved down into the last of my swims which really did look the part, no more than five minutes and another chub was hooked. Sometimes no matter what you try to do to avoid them the chub just go on a munching mission and you can't do a thing about it and so at that point I called it a night.


Wednesday August the 29th

I decided to have a little go on another piece of the Soar new to me and on arriving was very happy with what I found. it really did look like barbel heaven. One bait was lowered under the rod top in the lee of a nearside tree while the other was flicked a few yards down to another overhanging tree. No sooner had I settled down in my chair when there was a splash, I peered downstream expecting to see fishy ripples but all I saw was a soggy spaniel swiming through my swim! A shout managed to stop the bloody thing's ball being thrown a second time thankfully and to be fair I was tucked away in the undergrowth so it wasn't the owners fault, nevertheless hardly conducive to catching fish and my confidence dropped rapidly.

I suppose it was a half hour or so later when the close in rod tip started to bounce gently as the lead was moved by a fish heading downstream. The fight was carried out right under my feet and due to the nature of the swim had to be a case of full on pressure on my part to keep the fish away from the tree roots. It certainly looked a reasonable fish and pulled the needle around to 10lb 1oz, I fired off a few self takes with my new camera and back she went no worse for her visit to fresh air.

I gave it another hour or so in another tasty looking swim further downstream and then had to head for home to sort out things for work the next day but I had certainly taken a shine to the area and planned on giving it a bit more attention.

River Soar barbel - Pastures new

Saturday the 25th of August

Having spent a good deal of time fishing the more popular known barbel stretches on the Soar over the years I felt that it was time to look further afield for the chance of both peace and quiet and an unknown big fish. On Thursday I spent an hour or two walking and baited some likely looking spots with a small amount of pellet and boilie, the baiting was repeated on Friday night and on Saturday afternoon I ventured out fully kitted up and looking forward to a few hours fishing an area that I had hardly touched previously.

The weather forcast was for localised heavy showers and the sky certainly seemed to back that up so I bit the bullet and packed the brolly, not something I particularly like doing on a long walk but if needs must I'd rather do that than get a soaking. I won a Korum fibreglass brolly last year and it's a cracking bit of kit, well built without weighing a ton and I would certainly reccomend it if you are in the market for a new shelter.

With three swims having received bait already my confidence was reasonably high considering I had no idea of the head of barbel present however the best possible way to know what swims in front of you is to see it and with that in mind each area was baited once more with a small amount of pellet close enough in to see what was happening. With my tackle stashed away safely I spent the next hour and a half rotating between these areas just looking, fish were only seen in one swim and they were almost all chub although I did spot one large fish glide through the run just on the edge of my vision and thought that it could well have been a barbel.

Light conditions weren't perfect for spotting, no sooner had I adjusted to bright sunshine when a bank of cloud would arrive and I had to adapt again, and then it would brighten once more. I often prefer consistent cloud for fish spotting than constantly changing conditions, constant sunshine is of course best of all and on days with light cloud cover I often find myself watching for good gaps in the fluffy stuff which will lend themselves to good vision. Now I don't profess to be anywhere near excellent at seeing things below the surface, I find spotting a single barbel pectoral fin peaking from beneath streamer weed virtually impossible for instance, and as for identifying individual fish I find that difficult enough on the bank let alone while they are still swimmimg. What I do know though is that there is looking and there is looking, what I mean by that is you think that you are staring into the water effectively but in fact you aren't, adjust your focus to look through the surface (obviously always with polaroid lenses) and suddenly you start to see so much more. I often find it helps to concentrate on an object on the river bed like a stone or similiar in shallower water and then gradually work your way out into deeper water. Something to bear in mind with polaroid glasses is that ambient light bypassing the lens around the frame messes the positive effect up considerably, my solution is a peaked cap pulled down combined with my hands cupped around the side of the glasses though I have started exploring possibly clip on dark side shields which would help a lot.

With all of the visible activity taking place in the one swim then that was the obvious place to fish, the chub were constantly moving over the shallow gravel area that I had baited but any barbel present certainly were not, if they were there they were hanging back and with that in mind I swung out my rig to gently land a few feet further downstream into slightly deeper water. I flicked a second rod fifteen yards or so downstream towards a far bank tree and sat back to wait.I couldn't help but hear the odd rumble of thunder in the distance and see worrying looking banks of darkness pass me by, a light shower or two did come my way and one in particular that I had been watching approach looked to be turning nasty when the wind endeavored to send the brolly off downstream but it was an idle threat. 

I was just arranging my waterproof's for easy access when the upstream bait was taken and the rod, which I had left lying on a reedbed rather than on a rest, started to skip through the foliage. On bending into the fish it took off at an incredible pace and my first thoughts were of carp though it soon relented under pressure and moved back into the run under my bank where it held it's own for another couple of minutes before relenting and allowing me to guide the net beneath it's fairly substantial looking frame. Soar barbel and Derwent barbel are completely different beasts, where the Derwent fish are long and lean those from the Soar are stocky creatures and having gotten used to seeing the longer variety lately I found it tricky to guestimate the weight of this one, the scales told me it was 9lb 4oz's and I was happy at that, a good result for my first go on the stretch.

Short and stumpy!

I had promised to be back home at tea time so decided to call it a day at that point only pausing on my way back to the van to ask a ticketless Polish angler to leave, two brand new empty spinner packets were further up the bank too. On my way home I called in on the canal to do my bailiff bit and checked a couple of tickets, the sky was becoming increasingly ominous and I remarked to one bloke that I thought this time we were in for it but he thought otherwise. I had driven for no more than two minutes when the most incredible downpour forced me to slow almost to a halt, the roads were flooded in seconds and it was like driving through a thick fog, surreal. A mile up the road the rain stopped and as I headed towards my town I was in bright sunshine while I could see the houses ahead envelopped in a blanket of low cloud. I was aware of some kind of line across the road ahead and didn't realise what it was until I hit it, the same torrential rain storm, I had just enetered the town when there was the most terrific bang you have ever heard and a flash of lightening ahead, a house no more than two hundred yards away had been hit and the next day on passing a great big hole was visible in the roof. You have to wonder when, or if, this weather will ever get back to some kind of stability don't you, what a crazy year it has been.

River Soar barbel - in search of something special

After having a couple of good weeks barbel fishing on the River Derwent I felt ready for a change, the fact is I'm not used to such productive angling as the Derwent can provide. Don't get me wrong I'm certainly not complaining but the average size on the Derwent is I guess 7lb's or so and while you are catching smaller fish you aint catching the big ones. My conclusion was that I was probably more likely to catch a better average size on the River Soar plus I would dearly love a real big girl from my own river and so the Derwent was put on the back burner for a while.

So the old Soar, my stomping ground for the best part of thirty years and I love it. I've seen the river change dramatically over the years, as kids the hoards of gudgeon for which the river was famed were our staple, the occasional chub was our top prize, these topped out at not a lot more than two pounds in weight, and now and then a few perch would brighten the day. My favourite memory of the river long gone was my first attempt at fishing hemp seed for roach. Sitting on the concrete wall of a weirpool and running a stick float through the foam crusted run off I soon realised that to hit the lightning fast bites I had to keep the line between rod and float under close control and once I'd sorted that out I got into roach like I had never seen. In fact up to maybe two or three years ago a fish I caught that day at a pound and six ounces still stood as my biggest ever, an ancient looking creature, scales tinged with amber telling the story of a long life.

Now just memories

But as for barbel they were an unknown, the river authority made a number of stockings from Calverton fish farm in I would guess the late 1980's, in fact we recently found out that a further stocking was made within the last year or two, strange that the controlling club wasn't consulted, not that we would complain of course. My first experience of these fish was one opening day when along with my Dad I waded out to fish from a mid river island, amongst the bag of chub and bits we caught three barbel of maybe a couple of pounds or so, we'd never even seen the species before but certainly knew when we hooked them as we had to wade down the rapids to net then after their initial blistering run.

Soar babies, unfortunately we knew nothing of the risks of barbel in keepnets back then

Not long after that episode my fishing turned almost exclusively to carp and River Soar barbel were forgotten until around 2005 when I started to take an interest in other species again and started to dabble for the species. I started to catch the odd barbel here and there mostly on conventional quiver tipping gear with corn or worm until I started to consider the constant disturbance from hooking other fish to be detrimental and turned to boilie and pellet on long hair rigs which were considerably more selective. My catch rate increased and I started to venture into areas of the river new to me, I had taken a number of fish around 8lb's in weight and was happy with that, I had no expectation, or even hope of a double figure fish to be honest. And then on one dark September night I netted a fish that left me totally shocked, at 11lb 11oz it was a fish that I didn't even begin to imagine lived in the river and it really fired my interest up.

11lb 11oz, the one we came to know as the scar fish

Since that time a fair few more Soar doubles have come to my net with the biggest an ounce short of thirteen pounds, the river is really starting to come into it's own now and I personally know of quite a few different fish in excess of that weight spread far and wide along the rivers length and no doubt there are more that remain uncaught or unreported, and they are the ones that really interest me. I don't plan on spending too much time in their pursuit, after all if I followed my plan I would be carp and bream fishing now, but it is a very interesting sideline and one that I enjoy so we shall see.

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.

A drought in the floods

Well the best made plans don't always come to fruition and that has certainly been the case for my angling over the last six weeks or so. Following my last post myself and the wife escaped the miserable excuse for a summer that we were experiencing and spent a week in Zante, my travel rod and a few bits of tackle were sneaked into the suitcase but to be honest I didn't see much to inspire me in the way of angling opportunities and with temperatures into the low forties decided that my best bet was to park myself on a sunbed under a brolly and get stuck into some reading.

As is always the way a week away from work in peak season causes me problems, the week before leaving is frantic, trying to cram in as many jobs as possible so as not to create even more of a back log on my return which was far from easy with the frequent downpours that have been so common this year. It became a case of long days when the weather allowed and as per usual I didn't look after myself properly, working silly hours without eating much just doesn't work and I ended up collapsing, luckily while at home, not so lucky in that I managed to headbutt the quarry tile floor and smash my glasses in the process, not a clever move and maybe one day I will learn. The week away let me recover but then I had to go like stink on my return to catch up and I was back to square one, in a word knackered, in theory I could have fitted in some short evening sessions on the bank, in practice I was dead on my feet. No doubt looking back through my winter blogs it seems like I've got the life of riley and can fish when I want, unfortunately for every up there is always a down! I did scoot off to the tench lake on one particularly wet morning that made my planned day of mowing a non starter, after a couple of hours sheltering under the brolly the sun broke through and everything started to dry quickly leaving me thinking of cutting grass. When the groundsman from the estate appeared with his mower my feelings of guilt were reinforced and I knew that I had to pack up and get to work, luckily a six pounder saved my blank just as I was breaking camp.

A couple of very short barbel sessions were managed on the Soar over the next three weeks but without result, on the last of these trips I spotted a barbel on my arrivial in both of the swims that I tried but after baiting saw nothing but the occaisional chub and bream, most unusual. What was apparent though is that the high water has done some good work in clearing the debris and weed growth that has started to choke the river over the last couple of years and created some interesting new spots to fish.

While I've not been doing much angling I have been out doing a bit of bailliffing in the odd spare hour, in general I've found the river to be very quiet, surprising given the prime barbel conditions that we have experienced and it hasn't got much busier since levels have dropped. Unfortunately though last week I came across some less than desirable angling, I came across three eastern european blokes on one of our stretches just before dusk on Saturday night, only one rod was in use and the holder showed me a vailid season ticket, all seemed well and I had a short conversation with them during which they said that nothing had been caught but on my way back to the van I found a builders bucket full of live perch hidden away in the long grass. Matey knew straight away that he had been rumbled and started to throw the fish back from a great height until I stopped him, there was no doubt about him knowing he was in the wrong. Fact is if the fish had been bashed on the head and stuck in a bag then I would have been none the wiser, and I guess that may well be the route that lot use in the future as I'm sure my bollocking won't stop them but at least they are aware that people are on the lookout, small consolation I'm afraid but better than nothing.

After that upsetting little incident I called in on our stretch of the canal on my way home, no one fishing along there but I did spot a couple of small tents right next to the road bridge behind some factory units and out of sheer nosiness went for a look. To be honest I expected it to be kids and was surprised to find an old boy getting on in years perched on a chair between two of those work spotlights on stands and surrounded by god only knows how much kit, a great big double burner stove with camping gas bottle, boxes of food and tackle of all descriptions and the two "portaloo" sized tents that had drawn my attention to him, one containing a shiny looking generator that no doubt was due to fire up those spotlights at any moment. I hadn't intended on getting out of the van but this one looked like definate entertainment value so I parked up and wandered over. The old fella obviously wasn't a great believer in false teeth as it took several seconds to decipher each mumbled word, perhaps he directed all of his available funds to the optician as his specs contained several milk bottle's worth of glass which had the effect of magnifying his eyes in a most disconcerting fashion. After asking him to repeat himself a couple of times I worked out that he had been dropped off by a neighbour and was stopping all night though he was in trouble as he couldn't get his brand new generator to fire up because he was sixty four (though I swear I misheard that and he was eighty four) and therefore wouldn't be able to see his float, which was positioned about five feet from the bank. My first thoughts that were if the lights were switched on any fish within twenty yards would quite possibly be blinded for life but I couldn't leave the old fella there without being able to wet a line and so I offered to have a go at getting the power up and running. Well for a start the bloody thing was switched off which was never going to help, then he hadn't a clue what the choke was either, with both of those things sorted out I gave the starter a pull and away it went first time. Job done I think, matey grabbed a couple of ragged bits of wire from the grass and connected them up, bingo, Blackpool illuminations had nothing on this one! I flicked the choke off and wished him a good nights fishing before turning to walk to the van, a mumbling of some description made me turn around just before I opened the door and I was greated by a huge swirling column of smoke pouring from the tent and soaring up above the road bridge! That was about as much as I could take and after suggesting that perhaps he should turn the generator off I shut myself in the van before cracking up in laughter.

Apologies for the picture quality it was taken on my phone, you get the idea!

Thing is that old chap was doing no one any harm, he had very little chance of catching anything but he was enjoying himself bless him and all credit to him, on the other hand we've got those other three catching a reasonable bag of fish with the full intention of stealing them, I know who I'd rather have on my waters any day of the week.

Smashing chub

Friday the 17th of February

Having struggled to find time to wet a line this week I was itching to get out on Friday and I had Derwent chub in mind though on the way I fancied dropping into a swim on the Soar that I had barbel fished in the summer which was riddled with chub including one or two that looked to be of a very good size for the river.

The Soar in this area is very narrow and shallow and a cautious approach was in order, I left the kit ten yards back from the water before sneaking up and dropping in three handfuls of liquidised bread twenty feet upstream of the holding area along a willow treeline before retreating to set the rod up. I half crawled into position in front of the tree and squeezed on a piece of flake before swinging the three swam shot rig out to the branches, the tight started to tighten up quickly in the flow and just kept on going, a fish had hit the bait instantly and I struck, which is where it all went wrong. Half into the strike the rod went with a bang, a clean break straight through the blank that left me holding a four foot length while the remaining section slid down the line towards the hooked fish briefly before there was a second crack and the line parted. There wasn't really a great deal I could do or think at that stage, mishaps happen so regularly to me that I think I half expect it nowadays and take them relatively calmly. Leaving hook and line in a fish I certainly wasn't happy about but there's consolation in the fact that chub rarely seem to have any problem whatsoever in shedding a hook so hopefully all was well on that front. I can only imagine that the rod had taken a knock at some stage and disaster was just waiting for a chance, another one on my long list of destroyed kit, the last broken rod was only a couple of months ago!

So that was me rodless, in fact even worse I couldn't actually think of a rod back at home that would do the job either, I've got heavier tip rods and lighter tip rods but nothing quite right, I rang around some local tackle shops to see if they had any of the Drennan models in that I had been considering recently but they hadn't so I did what I normally do in times of crisis and rang my old man up! After raiding his tackle for a carp feeder rod and being advised that it would be nice if I didn't break it I was back on the road, there wasn't much point in heading back to the disturbed swim so I went straight to the Derwent thinking myself lucky that I hadn't done that first else the trip to borrow a rod would have been much longer.

The plan was to start towards the upstream end of the stretch and work down and the first swim was one that I knew gave me a good chance of a bite having fished it several times last winter in extreme conditions, catching fish in temperatuires approaching minus ten degrees.

One from last winter in temperatures way below zero

Same routine again, in with some loose feed on the slack side of a lovely crease coming off a near bank tree before setting up the rod, with a choice of three quiver tips I had to go for the lightest which was still heavier than I would have preferred for use with a light swan shot rig. I flicked out a lump of bread flake just into the flow and let it swing back into the crease before tightening down, the tip behaved as I expected and was a bit too heavy with it proving to be difficult to put any tension in without moving the rig but it would have to do, constant small adjustments at the reel were needed to keep the tension correct. Within a couple of minutes the tip pulled smoothly and confidently round and I hooked into a fish, immediately jumping up from my chair and walking downstream to get an angle on it in case it headed for the upstream tree. The fight was steady though and it made no attempt to snag me so before long it was in the mesh and it wasn't a bad old chub at all, its always especially nice to catch one soon after a mishap I think, it certainly didn't look as big as the 4lb 13 fish from last week but the scales told a different story and made it 5lb 4oz's, very nice.

5lb 4oz

After a few pictures I walked the fish downstream a little way before releasing it to avoid disturbing the swim but another hour spent in the spot told me that I need not have bothered as the only indications were tiny knocks from small fish so it was time to move on.

Next stop was a tricky one to fish, tree's lined the far bank and there wasn't much doubt that chub would be present but the flow belted through across most of the river at express speed and holding a bait in position would be tricky. The plan was to cast the rig into a gap in the treeline, feed out a bow of line and allow the rig to bounce downstream before settling under the branches. To reduce water pressure on the line I sat at the top of the high bank with the rod tip maybe fifteen feet above the water, likewise the weight was increased to six swan shot and the current catching bread hookbait was replaced by a lump of cheese paste. The first cast was dragged out of position almost instantly and within seconds was directly downstream of the rod tip in the main flow, no good at all, second time I got it right and watched the quiver bounce as the weight tripped the gravel before coming to a halt putting a considerable bend in the tip. There was only one form that a bite could take in that situation and the massive dropback came after five minutes or so prompting a big sweeping strike to pick up the bow before connecting with the fish. This one put up a dogged fight in the fast water but I was pretty sure that it wasn't a big fish and I was proved right as I netted a chub of maybe 3 1/2lbs at the third attempt, the net head fighting the flow more than I fought the fish.

Another half hour in that swim produced no more action and I made my way to another area that I'd not fished before but which looked the part, not long after starting I had a couple of knocks and a sharp dropback which I failed to connect with but although I gave it a while longer that was the only sign of life. A move downstream by another fifty yards or so put me in a swim that always looks the part but which I've yet to see a fish caught from, a record I failed to change. I set of on another walk down river with the intention  of  fishing the swim I had last weeks chub from, on the way I plopped a few samples of cheese paste into two likely looking areas with the intention of giving them a go on the way back to the van. Three quarters of an hour in the "perch" swim without the tip moving and I made my way back towards those spots but it was apparent that the warmer weather had enticed a good few anglers out and the first baited swim was now occupied. It is actually rare for me to see another angler on the stretch but all of a sudden they seemed to be arriving in droves, two more were roving the far bank and several others were now in the top field. I gave it another forty five minutes in the first spot I had baited without result and decided to call it a day.

After a lot of umming, arring and internet scouring I cut the choice of replacement rod down to a couple of Drennan series 7 models, either the Avon quiver, though I have no use for yet another avon topped rod, or the Puddle Chucker carp feeder models. Fortunately one of my local shops had some rods in stock and I was able to have a good look at them today, finally settling on the carp feeder in 11ft which comes with tips of 1.5, 2 and 3oz and has enough poke for my normal style of chubbing yet should also be perfectly adequate for my river perch fishing though I will take some white paint to those tips sometime soon and I have a 1oz tip on order. Its a shame they label it as a carp rod actually as it looks perfect for the job in hand, I'll report back when I've put it to the test, or broken it...