Wednesday 24th August Bristol Avon

I’m not going to mention the O word today in this blog.

My wife though was very impressed with the photo’s and video and knows about the O word and how I feel, she could see the damage on the fish and also the poor ones that didn’t get away. But she still doesn’t like me keeping the fish out of the water for photo’s and video. Now I’m not going there!!!!!

I returned to a more productive area on the BA where there are some good barbel in numbers. However the swims I know that contain barbel didn’t show any sign of them. My mate Shaun contacted me to say that he had some good fish over the previous 2 days, so no wonder they were not in the mood.

I baited a few swims and kept watching and hoping but nothing showed.

I feel like a miserable so and so going on here. No comments please!

The local shop must have had a sale of inflatables dingies (£25 each) because the local youth had bought the entire stock and decided that today would be the best day to race down the BA. For about 2 hrs the boats would go through the swims scattering the barbel, well the none existence barbel to be truthful. Being a mild mannered guy I left them to the river as I’m sure they would want to paddle upstream again later.

I was being drawn back to the swim downstream ( a good few miles) where I had seen a good fish.

Arriving I had a chat to Richard whom I’d not seen for ages. We talked about plenty of barbel things and how the O’s had cleared the place out. I think we agreed that I would help him on the Stour later in the year to catch some large chub on the float trotting.

So I made my way to the river while he walked his black labrador. The river was deserted and I was the only angler.

So guess what I made my way to the swim where I had seen the big barbel and one more guess will tell you that I caught a barbel within 5 minutes.

I tossed a few pellets into the swim under the willow branches and a few clouds of silt told me that the barbel were at home. Is it the sound of the pellets or the smell, I just don’t know but it works.

The line pulled tight and I was playing this barbel which to be fair fought very well for it’s size. It was not the big one again.

So there I was looking at a small perfect barbel wishing him all the luck in the world and telling him to beware of the O’s.

I then moved to another swim which I baited and left to return later.

The final swim was where I had caught two barbel the previous day and sure enough the barbel and big chub were at home. Again a few pellets were tossed into the swim and barbel and chub came out to play. I feel very privileged to be able to see the barbel feeding. This is the most exciting way of fishing, watching them take the bait. You learn so much. It is possible to get them to move from one side of the river to the other by feeding pellets.

The result was a barbel in about 5 minutes and there were about 4 or 5 barbel scurrying around to get at the bait.

So the swim is an easy one to see barbel, but is difficult to fish, perhaps that’s why they are there.

I rested the swim for a while to see if the chub came back.

Sure enough they came back so did the barbel and I caught another one a bit smaller.

So 3 small barbel again for today so no blanks.

I bumped into a mate Kevin who was fishing further downstream. We both fish the same stretches on the Bristol Avon but he also fishes the Kennet, a river I’ve note cast into yet.

As I’m writing this the rain is pouring down I would say that the river will be in proper flood by the morning. This should freshen things up.