I was that eager to get in the car and get driving yesterday that I forgot several things. My chair, a buzzbar for my tripod, my feeders and my bait apron: /
Googled butchers in Newark and several came up, parked up in the town and the only one I came across was closed, went to Waitrose instead as i was having a BBQ.
Got on the river about 4pm and had a mooch about the top swims, all very popular (I'm told) but pegged too close together. So I decided to fish right at the bottom length on the the outside of the bend. My thinking behind this was it's is deepwater so I won't have to chuck too far in the night. After much faffing about setting up my stall i set up 2 rods and cast them halfway, downstream rod i had a 20mm krill pellet on, top rod a source boilie. It literally was chuck and chance because I put no bait out whatsoever. I was going to put some PVA bags out but I couldn't be bothered.
As it went dark i had my BBQ with a couple of beers and got in my sleeping bag about 10pm. I nodded off to be woken by the screech of my bite alarm receiver. I scrambled down to my bottom rod nd the alarm stopped, this was about 11-20pm. Got back in my bivvy and nodded off again to be woken at 11-35, this time i was in, anbd thought I'd hooked into a big chub the way it was scrapping. Soon realised it was a barbel as it took about 10-15 yards of line on a run.
There's something magical about drawing a good fish towards the net when night fishing, especially on a full moon. Where I am is shallow sandy bay so as I drew it towards me it started thrashing about in one last make for freedom. Í let it calm down and gently brought it into the net and soon realised it was my biggest Trent barbel. Not a monster but worth weighing, and the scales went to 8lb-3oz. Due to me being a full-time carer for my mum it's a first trip out and first fish this summer so i mut admit i felt happy. I cast back out and didn't have another bite all night.
Woke up about 8 and made some breakfast before heading to Future Fishing in nearby Farndon. Must be one of the best shops have ever been in because they have almost everything there.
Set up my heavy 1.5lb TC float rod with a 7bb stick-float to combat the blustery side winds and plummed the depth to find i had 9 ft of water 2 rod lengths out. What i didn't realise that when I waited out I was in quicksand, literally. I couldn't get my left leg out of the mud so I had to slip my foot out of my waders before a sunk anymore. I couldn't fish in the wind and and in quicksand so knocked it on the head. I caught half a dozen perch before a cheeky swan polished off a pint of maggots from the tub on my bait waiter, but it was obviously hungry so fair play.
Gonna have a snooze for an hour and then launch about a dozen large feeder casts to get some bait out of my top rod. I'll fish feeder on that and fill PVA bags on my downstream rig with pellets.
I feel confident about catching a bigger fish tonight, here's hoping...