The Ure Turns to Guinness

Looking at Gaugemap on Thursday morning The Ure had risen and fallen on Wednesday and was rising again. A rising river is good for barbel fishing, allegedly. By the time I got there the rise had stopped, but still worth a try. With the water a rather dark colour and the froth from the weir drifting down it looked like a flat pint of Guinness.

Even before I'd set up the swan family put in an appearance. Thankfully there wasn't much weed drifting down, but there were some quite large lumps of foam. 

 








 The first rod, armed with a 12mm pellet was cast over to the far bank after I'd dropped in several handfuls of smaller pellets. On the inside line I was going to fish Spam over hemp. As I was tossing the hemp in the pellet rod looped over and I was into a hard fighting barbel of 5lb 11oz which made several determined efforts to get into the tree roots under my feet. These Ure barbel do fight above their weight. Just after I returned it the gentleman in the next swim had an 11lb+ pike, a nice looking fish it was too. While talking to his friend I had another bite on the pellet rod. When I lifted into it things felt a bit strange. After very little movement either way what ever it was started to move, but I could feel that horrible grating sensation that signifies the line is rubbing against something. As I tried to change the angle the line parted. The hook length was badly frayed when I retrieved the rig. That was to be the last bite on the pellet rig.

In the meantime the chub, or whatever, decide to prat about with my Spam. Although I had several unmissable bites I didn't  contact with anything. Further upstream a huge 6lb+ chub had been taken. The evening was completely devoid of action with a couple of late arrivals not getting even a rattle even though the river looked great.