Fished a cracking Mr Crabtree like farm pond yesterday. Only caught a small Rudd and a really cute 4oz common carp but I stuck to fishing banded pellet and corn. Snorky said he had about 20 on maggot including a perfect looking 2lb tench.
Had a BBQ late afternoon and went to Ross town stretch for a few hours late evening. The guy next tent is an angler so we went together. Decided to fish a double peg I'd weighed up night before, not a swim with the best looking features but best for comfort.
Several of the pegs I've previously fished are now overgrown and unfishable. Best looking peg is a deep hole with back eddy but getting down the steep bank is a feat in itself, staying their perched on a slope that drops into a 10ft deep plus pool is another, and I didn't fancy getting wet!
Said to James I fancied us to catch as the river was fining off and it looked the right colour after heavy rain in mid Wales at it's source. Set up my trusty Korum twin tip feeder rod with 1.75 TC tip, only because both rods had the finer tips on to rigs. There were two two ominous looking willow trees either side and my 2.2TC tip has that extra backbone to help steer bigger fish away from the sanctuary of visable snags.
Made a mix up of fishmeal groundbait, hemp, 6ml pellets corn and bits of luncheon meat using a large capacity 2oz feeder. This held bottom as I was fishing only 10m out in about 10-12 ft depth. I like to night fish a deeper swim as I feel specimen barbel are either solitary fish or living together in very small numbers unlike smaller sized shoal fish. I've previously caught some good barbel between 5-8lb but bigger fish are more elusive hence not fishing shallow even flowing swims the shoal fish reside in.
Hookbait was a 21ml 'The Source' pellet, I call them 'donkey chokers' as pellets don't come much bigger and this size I find seems to attract larger fish, but a greedy 3lb chub has no problem gobbling pellets of this size down.
A few casts in quick succession of loaded feeder got a carpet of feed in the swim for the last hour of daylight, first hour of darkness. It's important to cast as accurately as possible as you don't want to scatter any fish from baited swim with duff casts.
Was about 40 minutes before I had any kind of bite which was a quick double tap on the tip. I think it was either a chub or a line bite. Could have even been a bat clipping the line as it darted around eating insects as dusk fell.
My first proper wrap round bite came about 15 minutes after sunset and I was into a hard fighting barbel that stripped about 10m of line from spool on first run. Was safely in my net after a few minutes making a last second lunge for freedom before I slipped the net under, get in you beauty!
James returned from the kebab shop just in time to take a couple of pics and I didn't weigh fish but I gave it 8-8.5lb, a very satisfying catch and always nice to get the blanking hoodoo out of the way.
I had another proper tip wrap round half an hour later and this fish felt larger and more powerful stripping line off no problem against fairly tight set clutch. Just about to get it within netting range and it went mental and the bloody hook pulled out, bastard! Could have been an elusive double, ah well, shit happens, at least it didn't bust my rig off.
Soon after James hit into a good fish from the deep hole just in front of us. He started panicking and I told him to get his rod tip up to control fish and guage where the fish was heading, particularly as he was just downstream of willow bush of under water snag, an obvious bolt hole.
After a few minutes I slipped the net under another fine looking barbel I guestimated around 9lb. The scales went down to 8.2oz and after a couple of pics was safely returned.
We fished on another hour as packed up about 12-30, both happy in catching a good size barbel.
