Flood water fishing

[Neil Smart]

No, no chair, and all I took was a small 15-20L walking rucksack to put the bare minimum of kit in. I think I usually travel light anyway but yesterday was a breath of fresh air not having any extras or anything to weigh me down.

I was at Barton on the W.Avon and I find this stretch tough anyway so I wasn't expecting to catch (I've never actually had a barbel from this venue) but I had the day off abd it was dry weather so took advantage.

I'll continue with the meat approach or even single paste wrapped boilie cause I did have some meat out for 20mins or so and when I reeled in it was gone so not sure how long I had it out with a bare hook. I dug out my Guru 1.75 Duel tip, I blame the rod, if I had kept the FS Barbel tamer I'd have clearly caught with the correctly

Meat smothered in curry powder, size 4 buried in meat, if they want to feed and you're on them you'll catch quickly. You'll probably catch others from same spot as they are grouped together in a comfortable area.

If that sounds simplistic then that's because it probably is. The hardest part is finding them and being arsed to possibly sit in horrendous conditions but to sum up, big single smelly bait, good.

'Grouped together in a comfortable area'
I wish. The reality is we are fishing for the occasional solitary barbel that might wander into the stretch, tactics for shoal barbel is not really for the Warks Avon. Barbel numbers are at an all time low. There was a time you could often catch two or three in a session, at least.

 

[Alex Gowney]

'Grouped together in a comfortable area'
I wish. The reality is we are fishing for the occasional solitary barbel that might wander into the stretch, tactics for shoal barbel is not really for the Warks Avon. Barbel numbers are at an all time low. There was a time you could often catch two or three in a session, at least.

It's a while ago that several fish could be expected in a session Neil. I remember back in 2008 myself and two friends had no less than 20 takes one evening when the river was rising rapidly, all on meat. This was on BAA Wasperton stretch, and I have caught more doubles from there than anywhere, but for some reason on this particular session, most of the fish we landed, can't remember how many, were between 6 and 9 pounds, more of them being closer to six. I have noticed this before and given it some thought and concluded, rightly or wrongly, that all the fish present were feeding hard on a rapidly rising river and there were more fish in the average bracket than the larger size. This makes sense of course, but normally on that stretch if you caught four barbel you would be unlucky if one wasn't a double. Also I found on this stretch that the classic conditions of a river fining down after a flood were nowhere near as productive as a rapidly risng river.