Sunday 28th August Bristol Avon stuck on 6lbers

Here I was thinking that I’ve got 6 hrs spare (the Misses was having her hair done) the river being up and coloured and the barbel should be feeding. Normally I don’t venture out too much on a weekend but the conditions looked too good, even if it was a short session.

I arrived in the fishery car park to find just the one car there, what a surprise! I slowly loaded the tackle and walked across the field to the swims I wanted to fish. Both produce large barbel over 10 lbs. Both of them were free so I put a few pellets in the area where the barbel feed.

The river was a little higher than it’s been over the previous few weeks and had just a slight colour. I could still see into the depths of the river, but couldn’t quite make out the barbel shapes (if there were any). I settled into the first choice swim and lobbed out the bolt rig in the area where they would feed. I had the normal end rig size 10 Drennan hook 12″ of  ESP sink braid with a pva bag of 10 pellets or so.

I was going to give each swim 40 minutes or so each and keep rotating between them. Well after exactly 40 minutes in the first swim I thought I saw a barbel’s tail sweep around in the baited area. Sometimes it can be a small fish moving about however I was reasonably certain. Sure enough after 5 minutes the rod hooped over and I was playing a barbel. This was the swim where I had lost a very big barbel about 1 month ago. To be fair this wasn’t the monster barbel and I had it under control quite quickly.

On the scales it went just over 6lbs. I seem to be stuck on this figure wherever I fish for barbel. However I’m not complaining as it avoids that blank.

I decided to rest the swim and move to the other swim. Out went the identical rig into the area where these barbel feed. The storm clouds were starting to gather. No rain had been forecast so I thought it was going to be a short shower which it was. As I sat under the umbrella on the unhooking mat another angler passed by. I continued to fish for 45 minutes in this swim without a bite. I peeped out to see the other angler in the swim I had caught the 6lber. As I walked towards the swim I could see it was my mate Shaun. We had a chat as the shower persisted about the fishing. I told him I had one in there about an hour ago. With the clouds getting progressivly darker he said he would take his chances and sit tight. I moved back to the swim swiftly as the rain was really starting to fall heavily. Then for about an hour the heavens opened with thunder and lightning and there I was sat under the umbrella. Still no bites. Shaun caught a 7lb fish so we wasn’t blanking too.

So that was it for the afternoon 4 hours fishing and one small barbel.