11th July and 4 X 8lb plus barbel on the River Wye

The difficulty in fishing the Courtfield stretch of the river Wye is getting a place on the beat. The quality of the fishing is superb and therefore people book well in advance such is the popularity. The only problem with this is that you cannot predict what condition the river will be in. Last week for instance it was up over 3 metres on the Sunday and when I went on Weds it was up 1 metre. That said even with the height of the river on Sunday plenty of barbel came out as they seemed to be feeding really hard in the flooded water (as they normally do).

This years fishing is in complete contrast to last year. Last year the river had low flow and was running clear. This year the river has been coloured practically full time and height and flow very variable.

Don’t let the conditions though put you off if you want to catch some of these barbel. Don the owner is most often on hand to give advice and he has a face book page which will give up to date info on the river height. http://www.facebook.com/LowerWyeFishing.

He also has a web page,  http://www.lowerwyefishing.co.uk/

You can also go to the EA flood alert to see the height too at different locations along the whole length of the river. http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/riverlevels/120764.aspx?stationId=4028

So I arrived at 5.30am to find the river up about 3.5ft with the colour dropping out. I settled into a swim that I had fished before.

The swim produced a couple of chub and one barbel to a hook pull which is very unusual. So maybe they had moved away as I had 13 barbel when I last fished it. It perhaps might be that the swim had been well fished since the beginning of the season. So a quick move downstream to another swim didn’t produce anything other than a few tugs from some chub. I met up with Don the owner and a couple of other fishermen. It’s great talking to Don he has such a wealth of knowledge on all things fishy.

The other anglers setup just downstream from me, so I thought I might head off to somewhere else.

Eventually I settled on a swim that hadn’t been fished for a while but had produced some larger fish to 9lb plus. And after 20 mins or so the rod arched around and I was playing a good sized barbel. When these take off into the flow you need sturdy tackle and line to guide them back into the slacker water.

Have a look at this video for the results of the session in the swim.

Even with these fish I lost two more on hookpulls and landed 3 chub between the 2-3lb mark.

The fishing though was not easy and I had to work really hard to entice them to feed. At one stage I had gone down to 6mm pellet and size 14 hook. Then I had to lengthen the hooklink because I was getting just sharp chub like pulls on the rod top. However by lengthening the hooklink this produced a couple of more barbel. I was using a 3oz open ended feeder and filling it with halibut pellets 6mm, 4mm and holding together with halibut ground bait. The size of pellet on the hook was 10mm which seemed to be much smaller than the other anglers were using.

So a great days fishing again, hard work yes but the rewards are there to be had.

The weather took a turn a for the worst in the afternoon with some heavy showers. The next day Thurs the heavens are due to open again, so it looks like the cycle of flooding is set to continue. Now where is that summer weather.

8lbs 1oz Wye barbel