Another H.Avon visit and bingo a 11lbs 9oz barbel

please read previous 5 blogs. I’m on blog overload!

Lots going on again and some excellent fishing with new clients and some I’ve guided before.

So still plenty of guiding and another day for me. I have decided to reduce the amount of guiding for the future as I’m not getting out myself.

So I was supposed to be fishing on the H.Avon Thursday however the forecast was for thunder and lightening now I’m no coward but waving carbon rod  around is not a good idea.

The journey down is always very interesting. The previous Thursday I traveled down listening to the Ashes Test match. It takes me about 90 minutes to reach my destination and it was great listening to the Aussie’s commit Pomiside  as one of their news papers put it. I found it possibly the best piece of commentary from Blowers (Henry Blofeld). He was so excited I thought he was going to have a heart attack. At each wicket I punched the air. Aggers ( Johnathan Agnew ) took over the commentary and the wickets still tumbled. I stopped off at Ibsley bridge on the Avon to speak to John Levell. We looked at the dace shoals and the odd salmon swim up under the bridge. By the time I had walked the river and spotted a few chub however no barbel I was back in the car and making my way to the section of river and England were  batting.

We all know what happened next!

So here I was doing the same journey hoping that the big chub I had seen on my previous visit would be around. As I pulled up in the car park there were already two other cars there one of them being John McGough who is on a roll catching big barbel at the moment. He is one of the best anglers in the syndicate he should be as he probably lives the nearest, 3 miles at a push.

I walked around and found a few chub and barbel and even had a nice double figured one feeding in mid river. It wasn’t the swim I planned to fish. However a few casts saw it still feeding on the West Country bait company pellets. I was watching it move over the baited area when bang the rod went around. It wasn’t the barbel but a 4 lb chub that ruined the show.

Moving to the big chub swim I put a few pellets out and the chub fought over them. It was disappointing not to have seen the big chub.

I caught a few chub on pellet but having to scale down the line to 8lb and size 14 hook. With the crystal clear water they can see the line for sure and they even spook off it when it’s back leaded too. The rod was a Fox extreme barbel 1.5 t/c rod which is just great for these chub.

The largest chub was just over 5lbs and it measured 20 inches which compared to the 5lbs 4oz 22.5 inches one I had the previous week.

Just over 5lbs and 20 inches long

The day wore on and another angler Chris moved into a swim just from me. At 6pm I saw a small barbel of about 4lbs feeding at my feet in just a few inches of water. So I flicked out a few more pellets a bit further out. Then another nice barbel of about 8lbs drifted into the swim and got it’s head down. They really do like these pellets.

I waited for the barbel to move out of the swim and gently put the bait onto the spot. Soon the barbel was back and in a blink of an eye the rod shot around and the barbel was under the weed bed pulling line from the reel. I thought great a 8lb barbel would be no problem. This fish fought really hard and had me in the weed often. I was very conscious of the line strength and played it gingerly each time going downstream to extract it from the weed. The current was very strong near my own bank and landing it here was difficult, so I had to go downstream to a slacker area.   The rod had a very healthy bend in it as I bought the barbel into the net.

It was when lifting the barbel from the river that I knew I had another large barbel. A perfectly coloured bronze fish.

11lbs 9oz barbel

On the scales she went 11lbs 9oz. Truly a beautiful barbel and I thought it was 8lbs or so!

Chris came and took the photo’s so that I kept her out of the water for the least amount of time.

7pm came and few other chub came up onto the bait. Feeling rather pleased with myself and a good fish under my belt it was time to head off home.

Happy Days