Short session 3rd July Bristol Avon

I only had time for a very short session on the upper Bristol Avon. I had wanted to return to where Archie and Trevor had seen that 9lb barbel.

Sure enough the large barbel was there in the shallow water. I couldn’t see the other two smaller barbel that accompany it. The water had increased in flow and colour since Sunday and the visibility was not as good as I had hoped for. I put in a few pellets by hand to land in a gravel run. This was followed swiftly by the baited rig. It had only been there for about 3 minutes when the tip banged around and I was playing a very lively barbel. It really was a tussle and at first I thought it might be the big one but soon I could see differently. have a look at the video.

So that was it for the swim. I put in a couple more pellets  hoping to return in a bout an hour.

I wandered off downstream and bumped into a mate of mine Ian and we chatted for about 30 minutes. It was starting to rain heavily now. I fished a lovely little swim and caught about 6 chub very quickly, they were all between 2 3lb.

I also watched a pair of Kingfishers feeding their young too. Have a look at this. You can hear the rain on the brolly.

Lastly amongst the chub I found another small barbel of 4.5lbs which looked in mint condition. This pool used to contain a couple of double figure fish plus some other good backup weights. It’s great to see these small fish coming through.

The rain now was getting impossible. I wandered back up to see if the 9lb barbel was around but it had not returned. I fished for another 20 minutes then decided together with Ian and John the other two fishing to call it a day. The river is certain to come up after this lot.

Over the last 4 days we had 14mm or half an inch of rain each day.