Two Or One Barbel

I spent Wednesday and Thursday morning staring at river levels trying to work out if any of the rivers would be rising from the rain. All the indications suggested the Wharfe would be the most likely to be rising. As it was it was falling while I was there and started to rise after I left. This was the same with the other rivers though. I decided to go back to my favourite stretch, but this time parked elsewhere. I did, however, have a wander round the parking spot but couldn't find the offending bit of metal. As I was wandering about about a dog walker asked what I'd lost. I told him the sorry tale of the flat tyres and he told me somebody had been down with an angle grinder earlier in the week and removed it. He didn't recommend parking there though as he'd had a couple of punctures from that area.

With the river lower than expected I went to last weeks swim and fished double 8mm pellet down the inside and one across the river at the edge of the main flow with blockend feeder full of well dosed pellets. After half an hour the rod on the inside whacked over in classic barbel style, but I contacted with nothing. A couple of hours later the rod went over again, but this time a fish stuck and set off down stream. Given I hadn't altered the clutch since last week when a 9lber hadn't really taken line I expected  something huge. Imagine my surprise when I finally netted quite a small barbel of 5lb 9oz. I've come across this before though. Often big barbel will just sit in the current while smaller ones dash about all over.

An hour later just as it was getting dark the other rod gave a drop back and after some frantic winding I was in again. The fish had shot into the current and dropped quite away down stream. After a good fight in which it attempt to get tangled with the other rod I had another barbel of 5lb 9oz, or rather i didn't. When I turned it over I noticed three red spots I'd seen on the first fish. It was the same one, caught 25 yards apart and had put up a good fight on both occasion.

As usual I fished into dark, but nowt else happened. One unusual occurrence though was two heron flying up the river vocalising. The only other time I've heard heron make a noise was at a heronry.

Thankfully when I got back to the car the tyres were still intact, though a side light bulb has blown.