Barbel Rescue

Had another short early morning session today. This time attempting to catch barbel on the float. My original intention was to rove may way along a section, but it was really muggy and no breeze. Just wandering down to the shallow end of the stretch was hard work, so I opted to alternate between three swim. The water had lost a bit of it's colour since last tiem and had dropped a couple of inches. It was, however, warm than it had been a lot further upstream, but not too warm.

Having tossed a large quantity of hemp into each swim I wandered back to the first swim to find a family of swans passing through. While I could see the large signets frantically paddling with both feet against the current the adults were just using the one. Strangely the same one the right one.

Trotting sweetcorn, I gave each swim  an hour before moving on to the next. The results weren't spectacular until I returned to the first swim for the last half hour. With 15 minutes to go the float finally went under for something other than weed on the hook. The initial run was very fast, but slowly I cranked it back up towards me before it continued past. It hadn't headed for the tree root and had stayed deep, which is usual a sign of a 5lb+ fish. Sure enough when finally landed it weighed in at 6lb 3oz.

I left it in the landing net while I packed up, quite happy. As it was trying to swim off with the landing net I released it. As I wandered back to the car I looked at the river about ten yards downstream from my swim to see a barbel rolling on the surface near the edge. I managed to get down to it before the current dragged it away. It wasn't my fish, but one a but smaller, around 4lb, with a length of mono trailing from it. It was hooked in the tail, but the end of the mono was wrapped round a small branch which had snagged in some weed. I held it in the landing net head for five minutes before releasing as it was pulling quite strongly and appeared to swim off well. Lets hope it's OK.

It was a right slog back to the car. Although  the cloud cover hadn't broken, the lack of a breeze really did make it very muggy. Lets hope the weekend's thunderstorms drop some water in the right places and freshen the rivers up again.