Another double figured barbel and a 6lb plus chub

It was just a few days later that I made my way down to the H.Avon again looking for barbel and chub. I fished the same swim as before and guess what the 3 barbel were still there but boy oh boy were they cagey. I’m not too surprised as plenty of anglers fish for them as spotting other barbel elsewhere is almost mission impossible.

I tried exactly the same baiting technique and sure enough out they came brushing the line with fins and tails. There were some good chub in there too. It was the chub that attacked me first with a 2 small ones of about 4lbs. The barbel spooked away after this, however they still came up on a far line well away from the baited area.

Like a coiled spring

Next fish was after several hours and turned out to be a beautiful 6lbs 1oz chub. Scale perfect, however I was in a pickle as I didn’t have my normal camera with me. However I did have my new phone and I quickly set it up for 3 shots with a 10 second time delay at the start and 2 seconds between shots. I was really pleased with the results.

6lbs 1oz chub

The day quickly moved on and I cast a little further down the swim right at the back end where I landed a couple of other chub of 4lbs or so. The days are long for me as I need to be up at 5am to arrive at 7am and as the days wears on I do feel fatigued. It got to about 6pm when I started to see the barbel move back out onto the bait. Not consistently but once every 15 mins or so. It wasn’t the largest one but still a good fish. Now what I had thought about was the positioning of the line and not letting the barbel feel it until it took the bait. So I positioned the rod about 5 yds further up the bank and had the line through a weed bed. Would this work.

I was watching the barbel go in and out of the baited area and then suddenly the rods buckled and it was on. Quickly covering the 5yds faster than Usain Bolt I was soon playing an angry barbel trying it’s best to reach the far willow snag. The trouble was that the line was under the said weed bed and I could feel the line pulling through the weed. I quickly positioned myself downstream and guided the fish and line through the stuff.

It’s great when you see the fish for the first time. At first I thought 8-9lbs and then as I guided it into the downstream pool it looked larger and sure enough on the scales it went 10lbs 4oz and again what a beautiful barbel.

10lbs 4oz

Again the mobile phone did the trick and the results were great, thanks Mr Samsung S7.