Wednesday 18 February 2009

What can go wrong, will...

I'm not going to take the scenic route to my destination today, I am going to get this entry over as quickly as I can. In short, I took advantage of a half term shopping trip to Stratford and got myself a days barbel fishing at Evesham
, where I fished for four hours, missed a good bite to worm, but had nothing to a new experiment of wrapping a hair rigged pellet in soft black pudding paste.



Nothing, that is, until a change of swim and some accurate baiting with hemp and pellets produced a hair raising take to this bait, resulting in the hooking of what was a very big fish indeed. I say it was big because something in the way the fish fights tells you this, it just tows you around as if nothing untoward had happened.


With my heart in my mouth, I readied the net and prepared myself to pump this powerful and weighty creature to the bank. The fish pulled a few yards of line from the reel as it began to wake up to its situation, and then I pulled hard for the first time. As I began to pull, and with the rod not under a great load, the line at some point underwater and above the lead, snapped clean off. It was the first line break I had experienced in many years, and it was all my fault. I was inconsolable. I went to bed last night and when I woke up I was still inconsolable. Only the writing of this entry has helped to clear my head.



It is virtually impossible to break line by the power of the rod alone if the strength of the line and the power of the rod is properly matched, and this outfit was that. No, this was line halved in strength by a nick or dint that I'd failed to pick up. Of course it could have been a sharp snag on the river bed that caused the break, but unfortunately, when such a thing happens, especially when it costs what you do know was a very good fish and probably a personal best, the only thing that you can say, is that something caused the line to be weakened at a crucial point, and the fault for that is probably your own.

Thankfully I use running leads and barbless hooks which work their way out in no time so the fish has to trail a short length of line around till then. Still, that's no consolation, is it?


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