Hello back again after a good layoff.
The reason for this layoff was the carp in my syndicate water were suffering from K.H.V and we lost a lot of fish.
I know it shouldn’t have stopped me from carping, but when you set your sights and targets for the season. And it all goes tits up you need to move on but I had no back up plan and I don’t to day ticket waters.
Well I've been enjoying a bit of Barbel fishing on the Warwickshire Avon with my mate John Marshall who is a very good match angler. And won many matches mainly on the rivers, he recently caught 14lb of 3inch roach and came second in a 4-hour match on the stick float.
That’s good angling.
I used to do a lot of river fishing so I found it quite easy to get back into it. Starting on the river Blythe catching plenty of chub and a 10lb Barbel using stick float waggler and lead methods.
My mate John Marshall showed me the ins and outs of the river Blythe and we caught plenty of fish. We then mover on to the Warwickshire Avon looking to catch some big Barbel and catch em
We did John catching around 10 Barbel with one double weighing 10lb 4oz and I ended up with 4 Barble and 3 of those where doubles upto 10lb 6oz in 8 short visits of about 4 hours per visit.
One of those visits I managed to lose the biggest Barbel I have ever seen.
The river itself was in flood with about 3ft on we found these 2 pegs out of the main flow.
I casted out just out of the main flow in a small marginal eddy I had been sat there a good 2hrs and all of a sudden the water erupted and this large torpedo shaped Barbel washed its gills and went down to feel on the hemp and pellets I had to put in 2hrs previous.
I sat the and waited it seemed like a life time waiting suddenly the line bites started so it was any minute now I was right the 30z tip wellied round I struck into something solid that I thought was a snag but this snag started moving I knew it was a big general I wanted to see it so badly but didn’t want to bully it after 10mins it broke the surface this fish was a monster a fish of a life time my heart was pounding like mad and I was sweating like a mad man not wanting to lose this battle of a lifetime .
The fish floundered out of the net once so we had a good look at the fish it was around 3ft long and at least 10 inches across its back we recon it was well over 16lb.
I thought this was it Avon record Barbel in my net made up,
No not me I let the bugger do me in the dead reeds and it was off.
Well my rattle went out of the pram and I sulked for the rest of the day (wouldn’t you?) that’s fishing.
My mate John also had one on and didn’t see it in 35mins of the battle finally leading to a hock pull same as me.