Avon Roach, Barbel and Pike — Tunnel Vision

Martin hasn't got over it. Fishing the Wye with Trefor West and Joe Chatterton, he hooked but then lost what all agreed was a huge pike and according to Martin, taking his hands off the steering wheel and making shapes in the air, one with "a head this big". He has my sympathy. I once lost a pike at Bury Hill with a head that size. After 20 minutes of fraught battle and with the fish just starting to tire, the hook hold failed. It happens to us all from time to time...

'The one that got away'.

I love such stories. Angling would not be what it is without them. What is interesting is that I have lost large chub and barbel, pike, perch and zander and desirable specimens of every other species, but have never lost a large roach in my career. In fact I cannot recall ever losing a roach of any size once hooked, though I know I must have on occasion. 

On arrival at the banks of the Wark's Avon we encounter one that didn't get away. A carp captured, killed and mutilated by an otter. Interesting that they devour only the protein packed liver and kidneys leaving the carcass behind for the buzzards and the carrion crows.  This carp weighed probably four pounds but just a quarter of a pound of meat was eaten and so each otter must kill a lot of large fish in order to survive on such small portions. I wonder how many gross pounds of fish they must kill for their net daily rations?

I have no personal grudge against them. How can you blame a creature for doing what it must? But I think if we are to coexist peacefully then numbers must be carefully monitored and culls instigated when and if those numbers rise beyond the capacity of a watercourse to support them without decimation of stocks. I know that nature lovers would recoil in horror at such a proposal, but this island is an entirely managed landscape from coast to coast without one square inch of wilderness between.

Mother Nature cannot be left to her own devices here, I'm afraid.  

Not a wilderness

I've decided to go roaming from swim to swim where I'll flick bread and maggots about, see what I find in the way of roach. Martin will squat in just the one for barbel, chub and predatory fish. It doesn't really work out for me. The smaller species do not seem to be active. Bites are curiously hard to find and when they come are non-committal, and so I manage a few gudgeon, but dace and roach are nowhere to be found. Even small perch aren't bothering the grubs. It is most frustrating.

But then the rod is very nearly pulled in the water. Something really worthwhile has taken a bunch of maggots and greedily. I think it must be a trout by the lively fight which tests the light roach rod to its very limits. But it's a baby barbel!

I never expect to catch them this size and I'm always fooled into thinking, 'trout' whenever I do. The Avon does have a few here and there, but I've never had one yet. One day I might be fooled correctly!

Martin is getting what he set out for with braces of barbel and chub and a pike to his credit. Nothing spectacular but encouraging. I struggle to catch anything but gudgeon. And that's very discouraging. Of course there are those who'd blame such a lack of bites on cormorants swearing they'd cleaned the river of all small fish but that just isn't true. They are here in their millions but for some reason they are just not feeding while the larger ones are. Perhaps it's the known presence of an otter that is to blame, and when Martin calls and reports sighting a dog right under his staging, then perhaps there's a little truth in that.

Whatever the truth it seems I'm bound to fail. After last week's great success with roach I was cautious about being too gung ho about my prospects today. But I didn't expect to fail so dismally. 

We round off the day with a single chub to my rod and further pike and barbel to Martin's. Last week may have been all about 'yours truly', but today was all about 'the big guy'. 

Perhaps I should have changed tack and fished for barbel for once... 

But where roach are concerned I do suffer terrible tunnel vision! 

Avon Zander — Our Accidental Jack

Martin finally improved and put his summer long 'double' dearth to bed the other night. Three in the one session he had, and all were ten-pounders. My theory that all the tens of eight and nine-pounders he'd caught beforehand had gorged on subaquatic lifeforms released from their weedy safe houses in the early autumn die-back seemed to be holding water. 

I don't know. All barbel look the same to me. Sleek brown sporty numbers rolling off the production line, one by one. A pound here or there isn't much of a difference and a 'double' probably the lowest bar to leap over and the most arbitrary of targets in coarse fishing.

They ain't two-pound roach, are they? A fourteen-pounder might just be the equivalent of that...

But they don't half pull back!

I wasn't there so couldn't say if weed was floating downstream or not. But this afternoon it was and in rafts. For this session I believe he'd shortened his hair rigs tight to the bait and for once was seeking to not deter chub. I think he might have been chub fishing, actually. But with the chance of a double, of course. 

My plan was to go after primarily, zander. But eels and perch, accidental pike, perhaps roach, the chance of tench, carp, dace and bream, chub too. God forbid, barbel also! My light rod would break clean in half. But that's the kind of menu you have when you ledger a worm on the right hander and float fish a slice of skimmer bream on the left, isn't it?  

Well, the float vanished half an hour after pitching it in. But the strike met with a familiar thud followed by slack line. The trusted hook pattern that has safely banked so many zander over the past few years had failed once again. It may have been a very small fish, or this, that, and the other. But all the while it's been failing so miserably that's what I've been telling myself.

The ledgered lobbie was ignored. For two hours. One of those baits that is always bound to raise interest from something — it was as if I'd cast a jelly worm and expected that to tempt without animation. But the sky was bright and cloudless, and the water gin clear, and this, that, and the other...

"When the sun goes down, they'll bite" was what every biteless angler about the place agreed upon. But when it finally reached the cloudless horizon the effect was unbearable. My swim had me facing directly toward twinned incandescant orbs of light and the closer they came together the more intense the torture became. So I pushed a bankstick into the mud, hung my hat upon it, and hid behind. 

Roach began porpoising. Textbook John Wilson stuff. Head and shoulders out of the water and all the rest.  When a large swirl was seen I cast the worm straight to. At last a worm bite came, a fish was hooked, and it felt a proper lump of a roach too. Shame it weren't! 

I've had far too many of these from the river this year. Can't seem to avoid them. My certainty about the utterly non-selective catchability of lobworms had kind of worked, though I'd expected such an accident to befall the fish bait. I retired the worm rod, re-rigged the float rod for ledgering, and set up a second ledgering rod for an all out zander assault into the approaching night. 

The earth turned and the terrible twins went away. Bats batted both high-set lines so I attempted a photo. It failed of course, but the flash scared them off and so the rod tips were motionless thereafter. When it was too dark to see them against the fading glow of the sun I thought I'd attach a couple of old red starlights, but they were so very old they failed to light up...

So I removed the long rests, pushed in short ones with buzzer bars attached, and hung bobbins of luncheon meat from the lines because I'd left the plastic ones on the kitchen table. They worked very well. They weren't moving very much, but they weren't moving just perfectly. But then the left hand meat bobbin twitched and very slowly rose upwards. Picking up the rod line was still paying out. So I struck and was briefly attached to a fish. Yet again the blasted hook had failed to catch!

The right hander was rigged with a circle hook. I had no idea if they would work any better because my trials with them are in their infancy. But they couldn't do worse, so hey ho. Nothing to lose. Then the right hand bobbin rose just as the left hander had. Slowly and deliberately. Winding down to take up the slack but not striking because this was a circle hook and you mustn't, there's the satisfying sensation of a well-hooked fish. And hopefully a big zander because it felt like it might well be...

But nearing netting reach but still in deep water the fish took off on long powerful runs so I knew I had another 'accident' coming my way. Nevertheless, it earned me a few challenge points because it was twice the size of any of the previous accidents I'd met with. And better still, the circle hook hold was perfect. 

All I had to do now was earn a few points for what I'd set out for. Again it was the circle set up that was to be tested and proven good, bad or indifferent.

Taking up slack and just winding in is all you have to do. It feels odd. None of that sweeping the rod over the shoulder to set the hook. It does the job all by itself finding a hold around the jaw bone and padlocking the fish to the rod and line.

In principal!

But it worked twice. The hold felt secure. None of that rectal clenching in anticipation of imminent failure that all zander anglers must suffer each and every time they hook up. If this was what I hoped for and not our accidental jack, then she was mine.

Deep down in ten feet of clear water there's a bright spot of light emerging. Caught in the beam of the headlamp — the eye of a zed. No powerful runs here. No problems at all but the one of a tricky full stretch netting job to perform across a shallow marginal shelf covered in rotting weed that looks way too risky to step out onto after dark.

Oh, and the hook-hold?

Was padlock tight.

Avon Chub — 5-1

A fortnight since I last caught a decent fish, last night I went down the Avon with Martin, carrying along minimal tackle but also the burdensome determination to break what has been something of a dearth of pleasurable activity of late. He was to try cracking a glass ceiling of his own. I was planning to roll meat down a fast chute of shallow water in search of big chub. 

Yep, that's right. Rolling meat — not for barbel. 

This tiring grind has dented my confidence in proven baits, trusted rigs, and my own abilities. It's seen me fishing at local free fisheries, mostly, and trying hard there to find tench, crucians, roach and carp. What I've found in place of all, are respectively birds, weeds, skimmers and crayfishes... 

For tench I turned up at a reedy lake armed with a box of hemp and corn and stupidly fed my shallow gin clear marginal swim with pouches of the mix. Coots arrived as if led by radar and proceeded to eat me out. I moved to deeper water thinking that would defeat them. It did for a while as they contented themselves with those stray yellow magnets that had fallen short. But of course, then they turned their attentions toward the more difficult dives over my baited areas and pushed me home. 

1-0

For crucians I thought I'd have another crack at the little lake nearby where I'd heard reports of their capture. Last time I'd tried it had been too weedy to fish anywhere but the deepest places. This time I  found much of the lake surface choked with mature duckweed fern. In this red mire there was just the one viable swim. A shallow area under deep shade where the duckweed had not flourished so well. All I got for my efforts there were a few tantalising liners as fish brushed the bulk shot, but nothing besides.

2-0

Roach fishing has become a matter of jostling for desired pegs and then wading through skimmer bream. Bread takes a while to attract roach in this canal unless dropped amongst them. It takes no time at all to attract little bream who seem to have flourished after a couple seasons of very successful recruitment. However, this population explosion is creating a very popular venue. So much so that five or six anglers are seen every day in popular spots. Three or four years ago I'd only see that many in a fortnight. 

3-0

Carp were a target because I'd inadvertently found some the week before. I'd turned up with my pole in search of silver bream, baited a likely looking dent in the far bank brambles with hemp and caster, and dropped in. Not two minutes later a large swirl erupted under the trailing briars. Attention fixed upon it in wonder at what might have caused it, I looked back to the float but it wasn't there. I found myself attached to what felt like a sodden sofa cushion. But it was not that. It was moving the wrong way. I fancied I'd foul-hooked some kind of large fish.

Or at least I presume it was fouled, because no amount of effort on my part would shift it and it seemed to think it had snagged a scale on a thorn. Rising in the shallow water, the fish rolled sideways when I saw the orange/brown flank and large individual scales of a big mirror carp. It succeeded in shifting the hook and vanished quite unperturbed.

Of course, having witnessed at least two carp and large ones at that, meant effort had to be made to catch one. So I pre-baited that swim every morning for a week with the same mix and the addition of a little corn. Early one morning I fished again suitably armed. But succeeded only in having the hooks stripped clean of corn by the crayfish that my hopeful campaign had drawn in from all around. 

4-0

And then I went with Martin one evening to a new water. Reputed to hold crucians in excess of four pounds it seemed worth a shot. I could not buy a bite yet Martin two pegs along caught from the outset and continued in that vein of success through till dark Eventually I did manage three F1 carp, who looked remarkably crucian like. Well, that illusion didn't last for long when Martin brought down a real one for comparison and then had two more, and tench too. 

5-0

Rolling commences at 6 O'clock. The river level is very low but in the chute it seems plentiful enough. Fast paced, gin clear, and with the bright pink bait highly visible I believe I cannot go wrong. However, a few short trots down brings forth nothing. A few longer forays finds a single pluck. It's only when the bait reaches such great distance downstream that hooking fish will be to court disaster that I begin receiving indications that I've discovered the lie of my quarry. 

1-0

That spot happens to be at the head of the next swim downstream. That peg happens to be vacant. So I occupy it. There's a tricky problem though. The fast water there is some distance out from the bank. And there's a large pool of still water to be negotiated between and flanked each side by dense beds of reeds. Reaching where I'd found the fish to be is a matter of wading out half way, stripping loads of line from the centre-pin and luzzing the meat out to them. But it proves hopeless. Fifteen yards away and fishing at right angles to it, I cannot control the bait in the flow and I'm not in touch with it. It feels plain wrong.  

2-0

So I return to the bank and hatch a plan. There's a second rod in the quiver. Trouble is it's been used for fishing single grains of corn for carp, it's now too dark to tie on a hair, and I don't seem to have brought any along ready-tied. To compound matters the weight is three-ounces. That means I cannot cast all the way from the bank and have a hope in hell of keeping the soft bait on the hook without a stalk of grass jammed in the gape because the weight of the lead plunging through the water at speed will rip it through most every time and leave me fishing bare-hooked. But if I should employ a stalk to achieve a trusted cast that will then impede the strike.

I'm on the horns of a dilemma. 

So I hook the meat through, push the float stop up the line turning the bolt rig into a running rig so that the buoyant bait may pull a little line through the eye of the swivel when the heavy lead enters the water. Hopefully cushioning the shock. Then wade out and lob the rig as low as possible to where I want it hoping for a soft splashdown. I think it's OK. Returning to bank I find I've left my rod rest heads at home and have three useless sticks. Never mind. I wind the bank-stick camera swivel attachment in and rest the rod on that. 

The tip bangs hard over, springs back, but no there's hook up...

3-0

I repeat the procedure. A really savage take but a hopeless, fumbled, late strike

4-0

And again! 

5-0

It's now dark and wading out a matter of safe route memory. I have an iPhone torch but no lanyard and no fish is worth that cost. Time has all but run down and this will be last chance cast should I risk it  Nevertheless, I trust my footings by now so out I go. Once out there all alone up to my waist in the drink and the dark I consider staying put and fishing by touch alone, but don't. I feel that the only way a fish is going get pricked and hooked with such sharp and violent bangs is not by my flailing away, but by having the hook pull through the meat on a very tight line. 

I can just see the rod now. Then I've an idea. I flip the bait runner off then wind the spool back till the rod tip is bent right over against the weight of the lead but just below tripping point. A sprung trap. Should a fish take then I'm betting it'll dislodge so violently that the work will be done hands free. Within a minute the tip twitches, springs back straight, and then lurches toward the water.  Fish on! 

There's a little night vision coming on by now. So I wade again to control the angles of the fight. Glad of that when the fish becomes weeded. From the bank that would have become a real problem but beneath a vertical line extraction should be a simple matter. And then, when I have it beaten, I'll just walk it back to the bank and chin it out. The fish emerges into the clear, gradually tires, arises in the water, when I see a pair of big white lips.  

The takes may have been strident ones but all along I knew they were never arising from barbel. Too many in too short a time. Chub are what I set out for and eventually, that's what I get. My best for some time and since 2009 the only five-pounder. And I'm sure of that as I heave her onto the grass.

5-1

That's her weight , and the scores! 

Martin, who's camped in an upstream peg in pursuit of his first double of the season, has yet another single to add to a capture tally standing at 12. Made of sterner stuff than I, he's quite unperturbed.

13-0 

I couldn't bear it!

Avon Roach and Barbel — Saved by the Belles

To the shops!

Between yesterday's morning and evening work commitments I had a short session planned on a local free still water. Was going to fish corn over an experimental corn laced meaty ground bait to see if it would work. Had it all prepared and was ready to go when I learned that the girls were off to Stratford for the afternoon and were leaving in the next ten minutes... 

To the river!

Lucys Mill looked better than it has for ages. Last two trips the place seemed somewhat stagnant with hardly any of the exciting flow complexity I've learned to read and exploit. Apart from a trickle of water passing over the bottom weir, really it was just a lake then and most uninspiring. Now the top weir was flowing strongly and the bottom weir gushing noisily. It looked vital, and I hoped it might be alive with hungry roach.

The influx of water combined with the seasonal die back of weed had clearly caused something of a problem. Not, I thought, a serious one. Just the usual one of having to wind in occasionally to clear the line. However, this weed proved to be that from the great cabbage beds at Stratford Recreation Ground, fragments of which are neutral in buoyancy unlike reeds and rushes. And so the debris was not only at the surface but spread throughout the entire water column below.

I discovered quickly that this would cause a second problem. Fish were biting alright, but were scattered here, there and everywhere, and without any particular shoal concentrations I could locate.

So I was forced to cast my bread here, there and everywhere. I plucked a few small roach and a single gudgeon from various locations. But there wasn't the usual continual run of bites I'd come to expect. I'd get one there and then have to cast here to get another. And wait some time between. It was all too random to be successful unless by sheer chance.

The fish were clearly chasing natural food about — all that invertebrate life dislodged from the decomposing cabbages — and at all levels.  I could not compete without a float rod and a box of maggots at hand, neither of which were. And then an isolated shower approached and it rained. Heavily. And for some precious time in which I could not fish having left the cagoule I always have stashed in the side pocket for just such occasions drying in the shed. I stood under the trees and watched my hopes for this snatched opportunity crumbling...

When it stopped I tried downstream a little way for bream with corn on the hook and a large feeder full of experimental corn laced meaty groundbait. Cast way across the main flow and into the big slack far side I hoped it would sit still. Usually this will be fine so long as the flow channel is not very wide but today it was. Even with the rod set near vertical I could not stop a big belly of line developing. Not a problem so long as it doesn't dislodge the feeder and it didn't. Well, it didn't until sufficient weed had found the line when it was dragged along and bite detection was nigh impossible.

I dropped the tackle in the one place I reckoned it would stay put. Right under the bank and in the strongest and smoothest flow of all. Something of a gamble with only a roach net to hand and large barbel the only fish likely if a bite were to come. They would be chasing food too but along the bottom and right where my bait was placed. 

I'd banked a double-figure pike for Keith Jobling in that little pan and that at Stratford Rec. And it had happily accepted Simon Daley's seven-pound Dorset Stour chub too. Surely I could manage to fit a big barbel in head first, tail out, if I were to walk it downstream to slower and less tricky waters? 

Given sufficient time it would have happened, I'm certain. The conditions were perfect and my personal history of barbel fishing sessions at Lucys Mill, though not exactly extensive having tried just four times for them and them alone, is one of having hooked up to double-figure fish on three occasions. 

Luckily there wasn't nearly the time for such a sticky problem to occur or the session to count as 'barbel fishing'. Though I thought I had an hour to go, two happy ladies refreshed by their jaunt round town appeared earlier than anticipated with a funky little cardboard doggy box with a string handle and my hand-written name on it full of cheese and pickle and poached prawn sandwiches. 

Saved by the belles.

Back to the car and home...

Avon Roach — Bloody Peculiar

Finally, I have my license to fish and with a trip down the Avon planned for Friday evening I think I'll rack up a few scores on the Blogger's Challenge board and begin to give the lads a run for their money. My approach will be ledgered bread, an art form I am overly familiar with, and to be honest, finally tiring of. But it does tell me a lot about a new stretch of river that other approaches cannot.

It usually works well at getting bites and pretty much instantly. If bread loving fish are there to catch then you'll know within five minutes and usually less. And the beauty if it is that with enough experience under the belt you can tell with certainty which species of fish they come from before you hook and land one to prove it.

It's raining now and will rain all evening long by the look of it. Setting up first in a complicated pool with hundreds of options to choose from is not great where roach are concerned should they be the target. I don't even think roach like pools very much. I don't think they enjoy complexity, you see. But I cast about for bites, here and there, and everywhere, when I soon find a spot with fish in it. But they are not roach — too bouncy. I think either gudgeon or dace. Sure enough it's dace but very small ones. Nevertheless, three ounces of dace earns 14 points...

After half an hour or so I try a plume of faster water exiting the willow occupying almost the entire width of river upstream that has made this pool more complex than it ever would have been before it fell. There I get a roach bite. So I sit on my hands and wait out the initial quarter inch twangs for a more progressive and confident one inch take. In comes the first roach of the evening followed soon after by a half-pounder worth 12 points. Hoping I have a shoal at my disposal and possibly fish of decent size I find two is all I'll likely get because no more bites come.

On retrieve there's a jolt and a tug and a strong response deep down. A good chub perhaps, or even a big river bream with any luck?

No such luck. It's a bloody jack pike! But it's worth five bloody points...

It snaps the line in the net so I try to extract the hook lodged in its jaw. Of course it flips at just the wrong moment and punctures my thumb. Great. My reading glasses are at home and now I have to tie up another spade-end without the aid of focus. And the blood will likely flow for the next hour or more knowing something of the anticoagulant properties of the slather on pike teeth...

I think one more cast back to the spot will suffice and then I'll move along. I'm packing down for the move when in one brief second the rod lurches toward the water, springs back hard and then swings straight and level toward where the fish is headed, which is under the willow. There's nothing there. The hook is gone...

Damnation. Another tie up to perform...

Of course I'd failed to take the precaution of washing the blood off my thumb before baiting the hook, turning innocent bread devilish. Should have remembered that other strange day at Saxon Mill when on consecutive casts I caught both pike and perch on bread with the scent of my blood on it. I make a mental note to prick my thumb on a pike tooth next time I go piking proper and rig up a great dollop of bread as bait, because I'm sure it'll be the pike bait nonpareil.

Enough is enough and so I trot downstream in search of chub passing Martin and Joe on the way. Both are after barbel but they've had a small chub apiece, so maybe I'll join their club with one of my own? Settling into a new swim, and this time one that really does look very roachy in it's dull simplicity, I cast out and get roach bites straight off the bat. Another half-pounder flops into the net but then the bites stop.

On the retrieve there's a jolt and a tug and a strong response deep down. Yep, it's another tie up for me.

Just how powerful is the attraction of the scent of human blood to pike, eh? And how very little do you need to taint bread with to bring them to it? The flow abated half an hour ago, I've washed my hands, and had them covered in roach slime since, but still they seem to be able to detect it.

River score board 24/07/15

One more move and I'm done. I want a chub and will have one. A cast down the inside line finds me  chub bites. Unmistakable ones. A second cast nails it, though till I see the fish I'm not that sure it ain't another jack. But it heads under the raft of weed under the staging and gets stuck fast, when I'm certain it's a chub and certain to get a few more points should I extract it.

Just under two-pounds in weight it may be, but is worth 20 points...

Martin and Joe both go home without improvement though both catch more chub and Martin has a barbel too. But that's barbel fishing for you. When it comes to strategic scorings and tactical time management, once you have a scrawny summer eight or nine-pounder under the belt, you may as well leave them till early next springtime when points will be very hard to acquire across the board and then fish all out for a big double when they're fittest and they're fattest.

We plod across the field each weighed down with a stone of extra water about us and go home soaked and freezing, but I've a grand total of 51 points for four species to tally which pushes me one notch up the leader board and into 8th place on the river board.

Now, 51 points in an evening may not sound so great an achievement (think 4:12 chub) but small pike, roach, dace and chub combined trump by one point the barbel of ten-eight that might have taken me a whole week's worth of work to nail this time of the year but might weigh 12lb or more come February...

A bloody peculiar day, for sure, but not without its reward!

Leader board 24/07/15

Avon Barbel — Stuck in the Stalls

The scores afternoon of the 19th of June

With the Blogger's Challenge off to a flyer,  most of the field round the first bend and out of sight, Hatt is stuck in the stalls...

It's not that I haven't had the inclination, I have! It's simply that I've found neither the time nor the cash required to fish. Every hour of the 50 days since this competition began have been spent earning money enough to pay off all the various expenses of living plus a punishing solicitors bill. It was worth it though. Without his assistance I might have been stuck in a property dispute the rest of my life. 

Thankfully the last instalment of that invoice is already earned, banked and ready to pay and so there's a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

But I simply cannot afford the license fee right now because £30, though not a great deal of money, is greater than I can afford when that bill comes first, subsistence second, fags and beer without which I cannot exist meaningfully rank third, but every other pocket pilfering requisite of life descend in order of necessity with fishing and all other enjoyable comforts and pleasures of least priority.

Martin arranges a compromise. He's clipped one of those coupons from the Anglers Mail so he can 'take a friend fishing,' so I get my code and off we set on an early season barbel mission down the Avon.

A new stretch this. Quite lovely in the moderate heat of late afternoon. How nice it is to fish and not be encumbered in swaddling layers of hi-tech cold defeating cloth, don't you agree? Deck shoes and bare ankles — what a luxury!

Interesting swims too. Bends and riffles, reedy glides, pools, slacks, swirling eddy currents, you name it, it has it. After an hour or two looking about at our prospects for the season ahead, we finally settle down to fish. Martin choosing a fairly shallow near bank pool with a nice snag that just has to hold fish and myself opting for a central run of fairly swift water creating deep back eddies near bank and far.

First cast I have a bite on bacon grill. It does not connect. But it was a chub bite anyhow as are the next, the fifth, tenth and last. By nine, with just an hour left on our clock, I'm certain this swim holds neither barbel nor a chub of a size to get the bait in its gob. And so, with just one move possible, I opt to go upstream and find myself a new swim.

After ten minutes of indecision when I cannot decide between three possible options, for no apparent reason I choose the dullest of them. Just a straight run of water between reed beds, with no real feature in the water to recommend it, but somehow, it looks, 'right'. So I settle in and I cast out. Downstream and mid-channel. 

I find with barbel that watching the rod top is the best way to put them off. They never bite when I have my eyes fixed rigidly upon it, and so I focus on the slowly drifting distant clouds instead, whose barely perceptible movement amplifies its potential violence of motion in the far corner of my right eye.

No twangs and bangs and plucks and pulls and rattles and what have you, here. The rod is, for the first time in hours, monumentally still. 

A million buzzer midge cloud vision. I watch the swarming fuzz but can't see one. But in a crystal moment perceiving both near and far at one and the same time, in the middle distance catch an individual in flight... 

The bail arm flips wide open. A great whirl of spiralling slack escapes the spool exiting the tip ring in a great rococo arabesque.

She's gone for certain but winding forward and   rectifying my lazy mistake, the line tightens, and... she's still on!

There's a dour battle for ground. For a while it's about who owns the hooking field. I do. So she proceeds upstream and midstream to a point where I pull downstream and then she decides to go for cover, into the reeds, my bank.

Barbel aren't chub, though...

She exits just as soon as she enters.

Silly girl.

7:11.

Best barbel of the Blogger's Challenge thus far, but that won't last long if Mr Martin Roberts has anything to do with it...

  

Avon Zander & Barbel — Should've

I'd caught many hundreds of zander in my long and illustrious zander career. Sometimes, it'd seemed, with the rosy hindsight provided by a half-price bottle of middling plonk and the irreverence of spirit a roaring fire on a cool October night induces that once upon a time I'd caught a hundred in the one go. It was ten or so, and half of them were lost, but it seemed ten times that sum on occasion such was the feverish all-action nature of that memorable night round the corner, down the cut.

But I'd never caught one from the Avon, ever. That's probably because I'd never tried very hard, but I had tried once or twice. Actually it was the once I'd tried. With Danny Everitt — Seven Meadows, Stratford-upon-Avon —  frosty morning — roach on my mind — didn't put my back into it.

But just lately they'd taken up residence in my imagination once more, so, last Friday I finally decided to have a more focused crack at them on the same river but some miles downstream. There's this big, big slack near bank, you see. And it's very deep. Last time there I'd fished it hopelessly for roach trotting bread through but never had a bite. It'd occurred to me then that it might well hold front page zander or pike, so that's where I headed Friday night armed with a single rod and a dead roach or two, leaving Martin half a mile away to his barbel.

Should've turned my bloody phone off. 

My sliding float sat stationary for some time, the bait on the bottom in ten feet of water. Just a few feet further out and I couldn't find bottom with only an eleven foot rod and a stop shot blocking the tip ring. It was fourteen feet deep out there, I reckoned. Fifteen or sixteen perhaps? I should have tied on a rubber or something, something that would slip through the ring easily, but it was getting on for dark already and just couldn't be arsed to. It was pleasant enough to watch where it was, anyways. Seemed just as good a spot as any other. 

And then slowly it sank from sight...

'Slowly sinking from sight' is something that hardly ever happens with zeds down the cut. The float sort of ambles about in half-circles or takes off on a straight line toward something or other but rarely does it vanish. Whenever it does sink from sight, that's pike. So, I expected a pike now, as you would. Actually, I expected a bloody monster having imagined one earlier but it wasn't quite that. Just a small fish — a jack — most likely. 

But it wasn't! 

Hooraah!!

Didn't weight the fish. It was too small to bother with even though I was alone with no-one around to feel embarrassed by. I reckon two-pounds or so. Let's say, two-pounds and an-ounce, for the record. A new personal best for the species from the river by default as it was my very first and only thus far. Anyhow, having had my first and knowing a thing or two about zander being a self-proclaimed seasoned pro with 'em, I was absolutely positively certain that the same bait cast back to the very same spot would secure another, and possibly much, much, better one.

Like I said, I should've turned my bloody phone off... 

Suddenly, just when my hackles were rising with the falling of the light and prospect of monstrous zeds gracing my net, I'd to packed down and race back. His half expected breathless call had arrived and I'd duties to perform.

Half a mile distant — the best of Martin's year — ones!

This Friday...

I'll turn my bloody phone off....

Avon Barbel — In Each a Sweet Spot

You know it's true. Every swim has one. There or nowhere. All or nothing.

This particular swim has a very precise one. 'The Hole' is what I call the peg. A hole is what it is. Or at least what it once was because on arrival I almost walked straight past it unrecognised. "Huh? Maybe it's not where I think it is", so I walk downstream and then upstream, finally deciding that something has changed.

Down 'The Hole' June of last year. So tight I have to sit on the butt of the rod...

The tree had gone. The tree that made life so very tricky in an already very tricky peg had vanished, ripped out the bank during the recent floods. The vertiginous mudslide down to the the waters edge was the same, though. Six unevenly spaced worn down steps pitched at treacherous sloping angles where the slightest amount of rain on the highly compacted clay creates a surface film of slip that might create a disaster should a footfall be underestimated. And it had begun to rain right on arrival...

Pitching the brolly at the top of the bank I set about two jobs. The first was to catapult a tin of sweetcorn into the head of the swim and have most, but not all, arrive at the riverbed approximately downstream of the sweet spot to draw barbel upstream to it. The second was to take a bank stick and as far, and as noiselessly as possible, create flat steps before I even attempted to fish because I didn't want to fight barbel off infirm ground.

When I had, I then noticed that where the tree had been wrenched away there was an area of muddy gravel right at the edge of the river that with a little quiet work would provide a nice little platform for me. Half an hour later, by prising away loose material from above and carefully compacting it underfoot, I had it made. I then set about having the muddy steps strewn with gravel and compacting that too. Job done, I had the fight to come set up on my own terms.

About that sweet spot though. On previous sessions I'd fished all over the river but gained bites only from a small area beneath some kind of weedy snag that I can only imagine gives fish a sense of security. Everywhere else it seems to be fairly clean gravel. Casting precisely to it requires putting the lead out and away and having the current drag it back into position. Get the shot wrong it falls too high and snags or sets down too far or too wide, left or right. Get the shot just right, though, and a bite is more or less assured. I guess its one of the many reasons anglers are called 'anglers'...

Trouble was, before I'd always fished up the bank to my immediate left, now I was fishing six feet down and six feet to the right of that position, so I had to find the sweetspot, or rather the weedy snag above it, all over again because all the angles were now different. That job took far longer than I thought it would and for a time I believed that along with the tree, the snag had washed away too. Then at last a retrieve held firm and when pulled free came back minus bait, the feeder trailing three feet of rotten weed.

Proper bites failed to come though. Curious knocks and jangles but nothing in the way of solid enthusiasm. I thought I'd cast about a bit and had a small chub take the corn bait on the drop, but that was it. The swim seemed a stranger today and returning to the sweet spot even that proved redundant. All those little jingles and jangles there the work of tiny chublets attacking the corn, surely?

Perhaps it was not so sweet after all...

Methinks...

But then I remembered how often I'd caught barbel after experiencing the same elsewhere. Lucys Mill, for instance, where one night a multitude of odd indications whilst fishing meat eventually resulted in a massive bite missed, then later still a very violent take and a twelve pound fish on the bank. All the while Martin sitting watching had had those 'bites' down as chub, and anywhere else so would I have, but from long experience at Lucys I knew that there's very, very few in the tail of the weir because I'd fished thousands of casts with bread with just one chub to my credit amongst all the hundreds of roach. In fact I'd banked more barbel on bread than chub — a two pounder and an eight pounder — an 'interesting' scrap across strong flow near bank on just three-pound line!

If they were from barbel there and then, then maybe here and now...?

There are usually plenty of chub down the hole but few barbel. I've never banked one from it yet, but once lost a fish I still hold to be one of the largest I ever hooked, anywhere. I hadn't had many chub today so working on the premis that the indications might actually be line bites caused by rooting barbel wary of three grains of corn on a hook amongst a bed of singles, I thought of scaling down hook size and fishing one grain only but I switched to meat instead and put it smack on target.

Martin arrived with the news he'd had a six-pounder some way upstream and would I come take pictures. Ordinarily I would have obliged, but, I just couldn't leave this cast behind because I just knew it would produce placed right where it needed to be and a simple matter of time before it did, and so I declined.

Sorry mate. It was the only decision I could make!

But it was the right one because twenty minutes later the rod top plucked, then pulled, but then...

B'Jeezus! The reel screamed. I screamed. The fish screamed!

No time to disengage the baitrunner I jam my finger on the spool and try to bring down the blistering pace of the creature. It works, but burns. Click. The handle turns, were on the clutch now, but it's still taking line. Just when I think I'm in trouble, as so often with barbel, it turns upstream. Could have pulled the rod into the sea if it wanted but now it plods toward me coming into shallower water with every flick of its tail. I think that barring another savage lunge it's mine.

It's not so very heavy. Not quite the 'sixteen' I'm fishing for!

I see it flash, then see it rise, and then carefully drag it on top and push the net under. A scraper 'double' perhaps, or a pound or so less...

Nevertheless, the swim had finally given up a barbel and one I could bank because of nature's removal of a major obstacle and early work improving my battleground. Of course now every bugger can and will fish it because it's now relatively easy to fish from. They still have to find that sweet spot though, let me tell you.

Because it's there or nothing. All or nowhere.

Avon Barbel — Hammer and Chisel Job

After years of dragging me round to fish just about every mill on the Warwickshire Avon but failing to find his thrill, at a new venue to both of us, Mr Martin Roberts finally cracked his long-standing 11lb personal best for barbel this evening with a specimen weighing in at an impressive 13lb 5oz, and so monumental in the flesh it could have been a Rodin bronze.

My efforts don't even warrant mention alongside his achievement and for once I won't bore you with the minutiae of them but just showcase a glorious fish and one very happy man.

Believe me when I say that it's very hard to get Martin to smile in a picture.

But for once it was all too easy...

You couldn't have wiped it off with hammer and chisel!

 

Wye Barbel — Downhill Struggle

Catching chub on trotted maggots and trundled meat respectively but singularly failing to lure even a small one between us in long hours searching every likely looking lie, when we'd exhausted every last try, Steve and myself together agreed at a certain angling moment around 4pm that we'd now reached a watershed when a move really was necessary or in our quest for barbel we'd die on our sodden arses.

It had to be to another fishery entirely because by then we both knew this one to be a lost cause.

Making phone calls to friends he came up with a solution when pointed downstream to where they'd 'certainly' be found. First of all we had to find the place — and you'd never know it was there if you didn't have the information and was tricky to find even with it. A very steep hill to amble down and then likely swims to locate— a tall order on a stretch that looked at first sight pretty much the same all the way along.

Evenly wide, shallow and slow-moving there was little recommending one over any other, but working on pointed info gleaned from Steve's very generous tipsters then all what we had to do was 'walk to a certain point, cast right across, fish as close as possible to the far bank bushes and preferably right in them.'

Then, when we eventually found the spot, seriously, it looked no different than any other we'd passed by already...

Steve donned his waders but I couldn't be bothered with that sweaty faff having worn them all day long and choosing to fish from the bank I left them to dry on the grass behind.

That gave Steve a clear advantage when it came to getting baits into position shortening the chuck by half, where I put myself at a major disadvantage by attempting to do the same from a distance of 60 or 70 yards which is not an easy thing with a cage feeder carrying nothing.

Falling a good twenty yards short I got a bites on meat, but when one was hooked it proved to be a very tricky 2lb eel who escaped the rim of the net by an inch of tail six times before I finally got it in. It was cleanly hooked in the lip (nice of it to be so obliging!) but off the hook it then escaped through a hole so small only a dace could have got through, but he managed it and slivered rapidly back to the water.

Steve had an early chub but of barbel there was no sign yet. Our cheerful bailiff assured us that when the sun set behind the hill and its shadow was cast upon the water, they'd come on the feed. He was dead right about that because just as soon as it did, Steve was into what we'd come for — a barbel.

At last!

His bait was a boilie. So, I rifled around my bag and found some of my own. But they didn't work at all with not a single bite in an hour. When Steve then hooked his second and then third barbel I borrowed a handful of his magic bait (as you do!) and went back to fish more hopefully but fully aware that I was looking at a blank.

Just as soon as it hit the deck there was a pluck. Ooh — a blank maybe not!

A few cagey plucks later the cage feeder was replaced with a big fat two-ounce maggot feeder stuffed with crushed boilies and that missile was was easily flung within five yards of the trees. The rod sat still for two minutes, no more, before a twang and then a massive wrenching bite set me upon my feet, attached at last...

... and to what felt like a train.

No way was I going to land this fish easily from my position with it now heading downstream hard and determinedly Steve's way, so of course into the water I went in rolled up trousers wading out to an altogether better fighting stance.

Then Steve had another fish on. Two's up was too good a chance to miss because here was a top notch photo in the making, so all we had to do was lose neither and it was in the bag. But I thought I would lose mine. This fish was crazy! Convinced I'd a double to contend with, I played it as safe as I could. But when I finally saw the bruiser was not quite the brute it'd made itself out, I piled on the pressure and finally, after a lot of vicious runs and a splashy finale, netted it. 

Four pounds or so, it was just a puppy, but blimey could it pull...

Well, we got the picture! And by the end of play we'd have a few more because on the magic boilies barbel were hooked and beaten again and again, Steve finishing up with six or seven before bites dried up completely as darkness approached. Myself fishing bank-side lazy style but having to get in the water anyhow, just a few between.

Steve won the pot hands down. A hard-earned and well-deserved result at mate's rates.

And then it was homeward bound but not before that bloody hill was struggled back up weighed down with waders I never used but really think I should have.