River Derwent barbel fishing - double trouble

It seemed that all hope of me leaving the barbel alone this summer had gone out of the window. A few nice fish in the net soon shelved that idea and I was once again captivated by the species. A few days after catching the brace in my last blog and after taking an hour to negotiate the horror that is rush hour traffic I was back in the same swim. Once again "le van" was to be home for the night and I would be up to get to work in the morning. I must say I'm finding the bigger van very useful in that respect. Previously my evening sessions tended to get short by me wanting to get home before 'er indoors was asleep so as not to disturb her, now my only concern is that I make myself go to sleep early enough so as not to feel like death warmed up the next day, a great improvement!

Chub bolt rigs and other ramblings

Well I am now well behind with the blog for several reasons. After that amazing piking trip to Chew I was in limbo angling wise to some extent due to a few commitements and the fact that we were shortly off on holiday to Gambia. A brief opportunity came to fit in a session just before the holiday and I decided to have a crack at the Derwent chub.

For several years I have been considering the bolt rigging for chub situation. I've read plenty that tells me that it is viable though I've never really been completely happy with the method and when I have tried it on a few occaisions I have sat back and watched the rod tops knocking, shortly after each knock I can't help but think that if I was holding a quiver tip rod then I would have been playing a chub by now. Discussions with other anglers that have spent more time using the method that myself seemed to confirm my thoughts, it is an inefficient method but under some circumstances it becomes the best route to go down due to the prevailing circumstances. By prevailing conditions what I really mean is difficult fishing, low populations of chub which require longer sessions and possibly multiple rod use, it is accepted that some bites will not result in a fish being hooked but in the long run it is thought to offer better odds. It is still a difficult concept for me to take in but I do find it very interesting and it is something I wanted to investigate further so this session was going to be all out bolt rig style. I had bought a packet of circle hooks for just this purpose some time ago on the reccomendation of Bob Hornegold and so they were dug out of the tackle room along with some boilies and a bit of method mix and I was ready to go.

I didn't get to the Derwent till half an hour or so before dark but that wasn't a problem particularly as I fully expected after dark to be the prime time for a bite or two. The stretch does throw up a fair few 6lb plus chub but I've never really felt that I've cracked the place. I've had a number of chub over the last three or four years but only a couple over 5lb's and one of those was while perch fishing. I can't honestly say that I can walk on to the fishery and guarantee catching a fish, it certainly isn't heavily populated with chub. I knew where I wanted to try and so was soon in position. One rod was to be placed a rod length or so from the near margin in deep water for the river, possibly eight feet at a guess, the other rod would be swung out towards mid river in a bit more flow. Both rods had a gripper lead attached to a leadclip and a short braided hooklink with the strange looking circle hooks fitted hanging below. A 16mm boilie whittled down a bit was to be the hookbait and a wad of method mix with some pellet of various sizes added was moulded around the lead. I had no doubts that any fish present would know that the bait was there but the question was would they feed, and more to the point if they did would the rig do the business?

Despite fishing self hooking rigs I had fitted istotopes to the rod tops to show and interference with the rigs that didn't result in a hooked fish. Of course with a fixed lead the only way that an indication would be seen was if the lead was actually moved and so it was more than likely that I still wouldn't see the full picture but it might give some idea of aborted pick ups and was the best that I could do in that respect without using a running lead which I didn't want to do. Light rain soon started to fall prompting me to dig the brolly out and make myself cosy, the plan was to stop as late as possible aided by a couple of cans of caffeine loaded potion and to stay put in the one swim so I may as well be comfortable.

I lounged back, transfixed on the fireflies on the end of the carbons as the evening went on, there were no signs of knocks or twitches which I took to be  good thing though a more substantial indication would have been more than welcome and eventually it arrived. The close in rod just walloped straight over without warning and the alarm indicated a short run, that was what I wanted to see and gave some confidence in the method at least though one fish does not of course make a season.

4lb 13

That was my only fish, and indeed the only indication that I was aware of, all evening. I did have another visitor to the swim a bit later on though in the shape of an otter, the first absolutely definite sighting that I have made. To be honest even though I know full well that I have been amongst the creatuires for some years it still came as a bit of a shock to actually have one in front of me. It travelled downstream through my swim before making its way into a snag tree on the far bank where it seemed to stay for a few minutes, all of the time making a strange kind of rasping call before disappearing. Well I didn't really know what to do with myself after that, my confidence suddenly plunged and I felt a bit lost with all sorts of thoughts going through my mind. Within half an hour I'd decided to go home and by 11pm I was sitting on the sofa with beer in hand contemplating the effect that these otters will have on our future angling.

So a few days later we left Birmingham airport to it's -3 degrees of frost and flew off to the Gambia. This was a new destination to us, my favourite winter holiday destination is Goa but when the Indian government decided to virtually double the visa fee just as we were about to book I looked elsewhere. The six hours of flight time to Gambia versus ten odd to India plus the fact that there was no time difference from the UK was a great tempter. And then I remembered seeing John Wilson visiting the country on one of his shows. In the end and despite Lewis Baldwin giving me some great information on the fishing opportunities out there I decided to make it a fish free week and spend the holiday with 'er indoors, after all I do get away with quite a bit at home so I thought I should be fair for once. Besides, the sea was rough as hell...!

We did have a great week though and I was glad that I made the decision to take my decent camera with me as the bird life out there is incredible, for anyone interested in that kind of thing I would highly reccomend a visit.

I got home to find this cracking mug waiting for me, I won it in a competition on Facebook and it is now my new favourite, stunning artwork by Chris Turnbull.

A company called Printbiz supplies them along with some other species designs which I can see ending up in the cupboard soon