Thunder and a New PB

Given the weather warning for thunderstorms I kept looking at the rain radar to see what was heading my way. It looked like rain may arrive at tea time, but knowing whether it was going to be a light shower or something far worse was another matter. Sod it I'm going fishing. I head down to the Nidd where the farmer was gathering in his straw bales in. I had maggots, hemp and pellets with me. The intention being to float fish maggots over hemp and if the rain came I'd change to feeder fish pellets.

The first hour was mainly chewed maggots and the odd tiny dace along with the constant buzzing of bees as they take the last of the pollen from the Himalayan balsam. Occasionally  a seed pod would explode scattering seeds everywhere and triggering others seed pods to explode. 

Steadily the thunder got louder and louder. A look at the rain radar showed something horrible heading my way. As it got closer it looked like I may be on the edge of it. Even so the rain was really heavy and my light weight summer brolly isn't as waterproof as it could be. While the rain came down I chucked the feeder rod out with a 8mm pellet as bait. Not expecting much to happen I partook of a sandwich and cuppa. The heavy rain brought down a lot of willow leaves so when it eased off I stuck with the feeder but with a couple of maggots on the hook. This produced some real rattling bites on the barbel rod and resulted in several decent dace and the odd chublet.

After the worst of the leaf debris had past I went back on the float and rather than the dace I was expecting I was straight into gudgeon. One dace did show up just before everything went quiet. As I contemplated going back on the feeder I got a couple of strange bites where the float shot sideways across the water, but I didn't contact anything. Continuing with the float I got a bite right at the bottom of the swim and was clearly into something reasonable. At firsts it felt like a chub, but then it suddenly had a turn of speed which made me think a pike had grabbed what ever I'd hooked. As I turned it I felt the unmistakable head shaking of a perch and clearly a good one at that. After a little while and an attempt to get into the weeds under my feet it was in the net. It didn't look quite as big as it had fought, but it did feel heavy. At 3lb 1oz and 43cm it was a new PB, for this country, and my first 3lber.

I had a few more trots down, but the fading light and cloud cover was making the float very hard to see. While I could still see the rod tip I put the feeder out with a couple of maggots on. Just into dark, as the drizzle started, the rod hooped over and I was into what was clearly a barbel. Strangely it made no attempt to head for the snags but stuck resolutely to the bottom of the the river. After a brief battle, and the usual palaver near the net I had a barbel around the 4-5lb mark on the bank.

As I had no desire to be packing up in the rain I decoded to end the session there. The next problem was getting out of the swim. The precipitous bank I'd come down in the dry was now rally greasy with only nettles or thistles to hang on to. With the aid of the trusty storm pole I managed to get out and up the flood bank using the old two steps forward, one step back technique. The walk back to the car in the light drizzle and mist seemed a lot longer than the third of a mile it was.

Not a bad session at all, even with out the new PB. The river at this point still has a reasonable bit of water in it. I have seen it a lot lower.  I reckon if I'd fished at the other end of the fishery I'd have missed the heavy downpour as the farm track quickly turned dry with no water in the potholes like earlier.