There I was sitting with my wife watching BBC news at 9am and my mobile rings, it was one of my fishing buddies Paul Cox:-
“I’m out walking the dog, it’s not THAT cold and we have no snow forecast, the next couple of days are pants so I am off to the upper Lea, fancy getting cold and having no bites?â€
Now I had decided not to bother but like Paul I had watched the weather and to be honest a bad days fishing is better than a good day working so………………….!!!!
After getting my gear out, walking the dog and making a flask, I purchased essential supplied (two bars of chocolate, a blank is much better with chocolate) I arrived at the river at 11am.
Paul and I were not the only silly bug….......people, there were several others out and they were all fishing the lead for Barbel.
Now this is a very prolific Barbel water, but I just could not see how any sort of normal Barbel baits would work in such conditions.
Paul and I had a quick conflab, it WAS bloody cold, and there was a lazy old wind (one that did not bother to go around you, but went straight thought you), BUT we might nick the odd Dace and possibly a Chub if we fished small and light, right in the danger area next to the reeds of the far bank!
This fishery also holds some very big roach, Roach do not usually feed well in the cold, but the river did have a bit of colour and sometimes punch and puff (liquidised bread) will score, even in such hard conditions.
I had a pint of week old maggots, which I shared with Paul, we both knew that if the punch did not work, then single maggot with a minimum of feed (6 or so maggots every now and then, might possibly produce a bite or two).
Paul elected to fish the pole tight over, float touching the reeds in a small bay out of the currant; I went for a vey light stick float edged along the far reeds on my lovely little 12ft Microlite and the pin.
Conditions dictated that if we were to get any bites, we would need to fish light, Paul was fishing a swim which could do some big Chub so he went heavy on 0.10 (2lb 10oz) hook length, I went a bit lighter as I had a bit more room to play fish on 0.09 (2lb 2oz) hook length.
Our main problem was that if we were to get any fish feeding, Mr Barbel could well join in, particularly if we got a few fish feeding and competing for what little bait we were feeding.
After about an hour on the punch neither of us had had a fish, in fact only Paul had had what looked like a bite and even then the bite had not di-lodged his punch from the hook, so we shared a bar of chocolate and a cup of tea and decided to switch to maggot.
After about 20 mins I had a good bite which turned into a Chub of about 3lb, followed about 30 mins late by its twin, I was trying to warm my hands a bit when my phone rang, it was Paul:-
“If you want to come and take the pis………Mickey!! I am into a Barbel!â€
I grabbed my camera and walked down to Pauls swim, when I got there he was holding two sections of pole with about 10yards of doubled up 6 elastic pointing upstream.
Pauls hooklength took a bit of a beating!
As you can imaging I gave him every encouragement, while snapping away, I have to say Paul played the fish with immense skill and he eventually landed the fish which was about 6lb.
Later on, when the light was dropping I latched into a Barbel, which made my superb little Microlite bend horribly, but even my ham fisted attempts failed to botch everything up and I too landed my fish.
All in, a really good day, a Barbel apiece and 8 or so decent Chub between us, made this good because our expectations were quite low.
What does this prove, well nothing other than, there is no such thing as hopeless conditions, fishing fine and feeding very little but often, will often produce results when more robust methods do not, Paul and I managed to catch Barbel, because we adapted to the conditions, to be fair we knew we might get a hook in one and we knew that we would need to be careful because we were fishing with light gear, but we also knew that the fish were liable to be more lethargic than is the norm and often if you do not pull too hard the Barbel don’t either.
Possibly a single bait, like a pellet or a boilie might have produced a fish, it didn’t for other angers on the water, but it might have, between us we used about a quarter of a pint of maggots, so in theory I still have enough bait left for another 3 days of fishing in the snow!!
Tight lines.
