Nearly There?

Slight change of plan this week, mainly due to the horrendous weather forecast for Friday. With two of the 'big six' left to catch a barbel from I decide on an afternoon/evening session on the Swale. I could have made life easy for myself by going to one of the noted barbel areas like Topcliffe or Fawdington, but decided to fish one of my old favourites nearer to bottom of the river. The river was still a choccy brown colour following more rain in the dales and slowly rising. Spot on really, apart from the fact it was at that awkward height where you're too high up at the op of the bank, but he flat bit at the bottom is under water. Thankfully there were a couple of swims with flat bits halfway up the bank. One thing all this flooding has done is encourage the silver tourists up the rivers. I saw a couple jumping from the bridge and others while I was fishing. What was once a rare sight now seems to becoming a lot more common.

Tactics for the session were feeder fished pellet under a nearside tree and lob worm in a crease on the far side. The debris that was still coming down effected the inside line a lot more than the far side, but wasn't really much of a problem as it reminded me to refill the feeder. It was a couple of hours before I got my first bite, on the pellet, which I missed. A similar three foot twitch followed next cast. Assuming chub were responsible I shortened the hook link. over the next couple of hours I had several bites like this and kept shortening the hook length until it was around nine inches long. Still missing the unmissable bites I changed the feeder for a lead and the bites stopped. Coincidence or were they grabbing the feeder?

As the sun disappeared over the flood bank I was beginning to think of a blank. As I finished my last cuppa, contemplating packing up as I'd not put the head torch in the kit, the worm rod lurched over. I was in. At first I thought it was a salmonoid as it shot down stream at an amazing speed. I managed to turn it and pump it back towards me. Staying deep it now felt more like a barbel. Having got it level with me it continued upstream. I was now thinking of my first double of the season. With the rod held high I got it up to the surface and it now came to the net with relative ease. Clearly not a double, but hell of a fighter in the current. A quick weigh and a couple of photos the seven and a half pounder was back in the landing net and resting.

With no dusk to speak of it was now dark, but with enough star light to pack up by. Having got the kit to the top of the slippy-slidy I had one last check to see if I'd left anything behind and there, glinting in the light of the phone was the landing net complete with barbel trying to pull it in. Oops. Clearly back up to fighting strength it was released back for somebody else to catch.

Five of he six done I only have the Ure to conquer. Can it be done before the summers over? The Ure is not one of my favourite rivers for fishing and is the only one of the 'big six' I've never caught a double figure barbel from. It seems to be more of a chub river having never really done well for barbel on it. There's a potential seven more sessions available so we'll see.