River Wye Double figure barbel and several 9lbers

I have been exclusively guiding on the river Wye for the last two weeks. The river has been lowering in level for each visit and now at the lowest level that locals have ever seen. This is despite the record rainfall for the winter and spring.

Although this level in some swims has had little effect however other swims are now empty of barbel. Also where I was catching barbel last year in the flooded  swims 14ft deep now they are 6ft deep and hardly any flow and devoid of barbel. So you just can’t rely on last years results.

So with the low flows and river level the fishing has still been excellent with some exceptional fish being caught.

Firstly I guided Paul and Alex on the river. They had fished it last year with me and wanted some advice on swims and rigs again. I managed to put them in a good swim. They caught from the word go and carried on catching with 20 chub and barbel for the day. The largest barbel going 10lbs 7oz so what a great result for them.

Next was to be a two day session with 6 friends. I wasn’t to be fishing just guiding them on catching chub and barbel. The result was again very good with some very good fish caught. Although the levels dropped even further when we were there and one particular swim emptied of barbel. This has never been known before.

The rigs were much the same as I’ve used before. The two most important points were to cast regularly and in the correct areas.

These are a couple of points that visiting anglers often don’t appreciate.

I’m not  going to write too much about the two days other than to say that everyone caught barbel chub and we had a great social with a BBQ and a few beers on the evening. I will let the photo’s do the talking.

My last session on the Wye was with Ian. Now we had booked the beat where the barbel have exited. A local had fished it on Sunday and blanked, another angler fished it too the next day and blanked. Our arrival saw the river low and guest what, 3 chub later we were blanking. No barbel were in residence.

We moved to another beat where 3 other anglers were blanking too on the barbel front. This is on the one where we bagged up the previous week. We couldn’t get into the swim I wanted as an angler was already in there. He again couldn’t buy a barbel bite. How strange but given the conditions and the fact that the previous day was the warmest of the year at well over 30c it looked like the day would be difficult.

Ian and I settled on another swim upstream where he lost a couple of chub, however as the evening approached the rod wrenched over and a barbel was on!

It was great to land a barbel of 6lbs, not the largest fish but still it’s a barbel.

So as I write this the rain falling and temperatures lowering lets hope the levels improve on the Wye and I have to say on most of the other southern rivers.

I have been guiding a couple of anglers this week on the Carp Society Little Farriers lake and they have broken a few pb’s.

Happy Days!