Mark Swaby
Senior Member
Roach on my local rivers are like rocking horse poop due to the cormorant issue. So when a mate caught one of 1.5lb fishing meat on the Colne I was tempted to try for a few in my persuit for a colne 2lb er. The stretch is very overgrown with watercress, rushes and floating pennywort covering most of it so I suspect ideal for fish to avoid the black death. A couple of mornings fishing the sigma wand, 3.6lb stroft hooklength, 14 hook, a small cage feeder and bread punch resulted in lots of roach around 1/2lb but nothing bigger. At least I was getting Roach and bites. On the third visit a small tap on the tip resulted in me hooking a suspected Barbel about 6lb which decided to run through a load of rushes and break me. Oh well I was still on the Roach mission and could return with Barbel gear. The next session I arrived before daylight and the first 3 casts produced Roach. On the forth cast the tip did a little Roach like tap and drop back but my strike was met with a very different result. All hell let loose and a very solid fish decided to drag my little rod round to the butt and swim 20 yds under all the floating raft of pennywort / watercress. I had no idea what I had hooked but suspected a very big Barbel because of the slow powerful fight. The fish just would not come out from under the raft and rushes 20yds away in the raft would shake with the fish trying to break/ loose. Every time the fish went solid a turn of the rod downstream or upstream would get it moving again. Not one moment of the fight did I think I would land the fish, I just wanted to see what I had hooked. After about half an hour the fish finally came out from under the raft into the small pool. I had a pan net with me and looked to see where to try to land the fish, the only place with any depth was just the other side of a big sunken branch. It was just getting light but the fish had still not showed itself. The fish then rolled and just got a lot bigger than any earlier estimations. Sh1t a monster linear Mirror. Well I got even luckier after a couple of attempts to get the fish into the net its head went in. Sod getting wet feet, I grabbed the net and the fish lifted it up the shallows. The fish was still 1/2 out of the net but now beached in the shallows, both of us knackered. Luckily I carry my bread / liqudised bread bucket, rod rest, mat, scales etc in a big rigid armed old weigh sling. The contents were dumped on the bank and the carp bundled in, my rod rest went through the handles, it was safe in the shallows. The colmic WN501 hook was almost straight but had held. Now to find someone to take a photo. Down the track to a road I went a lady was walking to work along the pavement. How a jibbering wreck got a lady walking past down a still dark path to the river I do not know. I could see her hesitation so amongst all the other things I blurted out was 'I am not a luny, honest'. I went down to the sling and showed her the fish which seemed to calm her. Photos taken I thanked her she asked what it was and off she went. In the sling the fish went 28lb 1 oz and for a non carp angler looked a very pretty fish, I might even get tempted to the dark side. I suspect because the fight was so long and at no stage even when netting did I think I would land the fish the adrenalin buzz was so high and lasted for days. Forgive me for not putting a shot of me holding the fish up but they all give away a very obvious swim, which has produced Barbel every morning visit since, this is her in the sling.
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