Three More To Go. Will It Be Two?

The goal I set myself at the beginning of the season was to catch a barbel from the Derwent, Nidd, Ouse, Swale, Ure and Wharfe in summer. I have a month left and have got halfway with fish from the Derwent, Nidd and Wharfe. Today it was the turn of the Ouse to cough up a barbel. Things looked quite promising as it was about two metres up. One thing I wasn't expecting, but should have known was how coloured it was. When the Swale flash floods it always turns the muddy brown. Today they, though, it looked like somebody had given Swaledale a right good scrub and sent the muck down towards York. That's not to belittle the problems they had in Grinton and Leyburn on Tuesday with the flash flooding.

I managed to get the swim I wanted, peg one at the out flow of the beck where there is a big 'ole. A 22mm halibut pellet wrapped in paste and a mesh bag of broken pellets was dropped downstream in the 'ole and a lump of garlic infused spam was plonked in the crease in front of me. I sat back and waited. The silence broken by a salmoniod jumping in the mouth of the beck and the whining  Tucanos and an occasional V-22 Osprey, a strange looking beast. After three and a half hours of waiting the downstream rod tip lurched over and I was in to a hard fighting barbel which strangely headed out into the river instead of the partly submerged trees as I'd expected. After a couple of frights with the submerged bank side vegetation it was in the net. A chunky fish that weighed in at 7lb 15oz. Mission accomplished I'm now two thirds of the way to my goal. A chap upstream of me had had a similar sized fish. These fish, with their slightly odd looking tails, were reckoned to be stockies from Calverton. Stocked at a smaller size though.

The next bite came nearly three hours later. During which time the weather decided to celebrate Yorkshire Day by seing how many season it could fit in an hour or so. Showers, scorching sunshine, clouding over and down pours. As the rod tip stared to rattle around I struck into what felt like a heavy fish that seemed to suddenly go light and came in rather easily before high tailing it into the submerged trees to my right before the hook link parted. It was all rather strange. My feeling is that I'd hooked a small chub, or some thing, and some debris which had dropped off. The fish was then grabbed by a pike.

With errands to run I packed up earlier than I'd wanted to. As I packed up i talked with a chap that had arrived for the evening. He'd had half a dozen fish to double figures as the river rose the previous evening. Not sure what to do Friday as I've not fished the Swale or Ure in flood for a long long time and would rather have a look at normal levels before attempting it.