29th June 1st real spot of Bristol Avon barbel fishing

Armed with some hemp and pellets I headed off to fish an area of the Bristol Avon where I knew a few larger barbel remained.

The Bristol Avon barbel numbers have been decimated by otters. Some will say it’s a gap in year class, other will cite the floods of 2007 and 2009. But when you look at it closely where there are otters, barbel numbers are few. In the last few years I’ve caught some that had been raked down both sides, very lucky fish to be alive indeed.

Calm down, calm down! ( I sound like David Cammerrroooon here). My wife tells all our friends not to mention otters. Of course they do just to wind me up!

I have had my eye on a couple of swims, one which looked so good I had to try this first. I baited with hemp then went for a walk. After about 1.5hrs it looked like nobody was at home, so I moved to swim no.2. In went the hemp followed by some pellets and soon enough a couple of barbel were mooching around the bait. I waited until they left the swim before casting out.

What is it with barbel and cabbages in the river. They love them.

Must be a barbel or 3 in that lot.

I didn’t wait too long before I got that first bite, and so I played a fearsome barbel for a very short space of time before the hook pulled. This I tell you is a very rare occurrence, normally the hook hold stay’s put.

I checked everything and looked at another area where I had put some hemp and sure enough there were a couple of beasts present over 11lbs for sure plus some other good fish.

So out went the rig together with some free pellets in a PVA mesh.

Again I didn’t need to wait too long and a couple of nods on the rod followed by that 3ft twitch and “game on”. It was a fantastic tussle with cabbages being cut through, the twisting and turning of the barbel as it made for the snag. The rod was at full tilt I guess but everything held and soon I was netting a beautiful barbel.

This obviously upset the others somewhat and it was a while before they returned. I will say they were spooky which indicated that I was not the only one targeting them. At one point I had two what looked like doubles feeding under my feet, but although a had a few liners nothing much else came of it there.
I did have one more fish before I decided to stop and that was a roach.
I had been looking at this one for most of the afternoon and thought it was about 1lb however on the scales she went 1lbs 6oz. Not much of a fight on 1.75 t/c rods and 12lb line.
I will return though for another session soon.

Nice home these barbel have.