Wonderful Wyebank

Mathew waiting for a nibble!

After a busy weekend with work and family, I had a day booked in on Wyebank with Mathew for this Monday. The venue as some of you will know from my last post a week or two back with Bob....is a very fast flowing and shallow beat that is well suited to low water, summer barbel fishing.

We arrived just after dawn and set about the arduous task of lugging all our kit to the final swim on the beat which just happens to be the best holding area for the barbel. I positioned my box out in the water as I had on my previous trip and sorted Mathew out with a similar set up. We decided that the best approach for us to attack the swim with was to both fish it in a line with my rod out slightly further into the flow than Mats. This was we could keep the fish in one area rather than all over the swim.

We set up 5oz feeders and long 4 foot hooklengths with a size 8 hook and a small river monster boilie on the hair rig. We both had a small barbel within minutes, both weighing around 3lbs....Things looked good for a busy day! All become apparently harder as the morning progressed though and with increasing numbers of kayaks and very bright, hot sunshine, the fishing got tougher. We had to scale down to size 14 hooks and 6mm pellets to stay in touch with the fish and finally started to get into a few in numbers, albeit just small fish up to a pound in weight.

One of 27 barbel taken in the session!

Mathew decided to have a go with a new center pin reel he'd purchased from a mate and was adamant he wanted to catch a barbel on it using a stick float and trotting techniques. Well, he did just that no less than 6 times in fact! Each fish weighing around 2-3lbs in weight. Great work in the bright day time sun!

I plugged away on the feeder tactics and lost a very chunky 6lb+ chub to a bit of poor angling on my behalf. I allowed the fish to get a little bit out of hand whilst I was trying to net it and she went under the legs of my platform and cut me off. I was pretty gutted as it looked a very decent, thick set fish.

I had to wait another hour or so before finally grabbing a better barbel which tipped the scales to around 5 and a half pounds. Not a record by any standards but it certainly fought well in the fast waters of the bottom pool.

In the end we called it a day around 7pm to head down stream and do some drop shotting for perch. Unfortunately we didn't see a single fish down stream and retired feeling very tired around 9pm. The finished figures for the day though were pretty impressive and Mat finished on 14 barbel, I had 13 barbel and 4 chub. Great result and great fun! I did manage to grab a bit of brill underwater footage of Mathew playing a couple of barbel on the feeder.

I've got an extremely busy week planned for next week. Hopefully a quick 48hr session back up on the River Severn on Sunday, then a guiding day on Wyebank Wednesday...then Friday I'm away at a private lake in Berkshire for a 48hr social session with some very old friends I've not seen for some time. Then I'm meeting up with Bob for a night on the ponds after a chunky carp or two. Going to be busy busy!!!!

Tight lines guys
x

Pixham pleasures!!!!

7lb 1oz from Monmouth

Another great week or so on the river bank has just passed and yet more great stories to tell! This last few days has been no exception to the rule and despite stupidly low river conditions and clear water, the rivers have excelled in providing me with some of the best river fishing sport I have had in my career!

I paid a visit to my club water with Mathew again earlier in the week and we fished the same swims we had fished the week prior. Mathew chose to fish the lower swim and I went upstream a little.

On arrival I balled in around a half dozen small balls of groundbait and put both rods very slightly down stream of it. The action began almost immediately after and both of us started to receive a huge quantity of trembles on the rods. It wasn't long before my left hand rod hooped over into action and a very strong fish powered off down stream. The fight was dogged and intense. The fish knew all the tricks in the book and went for a fallen tree under the water below my swim. A bit of upstream pulling saw her clear and eventually into the waiting net.

7lb 2oz...peas in a pod!

I got the camera and weighing gear ready and wet the sling and mat. I hoisted her clear of the water and I knew then that I was looking at another double for the season! On the scales she tipped 10lb 10oz! Well chuffed with the result.

Things went a little quiet then and it wasn't until it was just dusk before I took another 2 smaller fish of 7lb 1oz and 7lb 2oz. Mathews swim was totally dead and all he managed all evening was a fat old 4lb chub! Very strange evening all round really as the fish just couldn't be placed in one spot and the 3 I took all came from different parts of the swim!

My ticket finally came through from the Barbel Society this week for Pixham Ferry on the Severn. I've been wanting to give the River Severn a go for some time now but the BAA stretches that I once had a small dabble on when I first moved to Wales are just a little out of reach for a days fishing. The best part of the Pixham ticket is that you can fully night fish for up to 48hrs, which means I can make it a worth while visit.

10lb 10oz! Stunning in every way!

I got in touch with Lee Wilkes who is the Fishery Manager and he pointed me in the right direction with regards to parking an swims etc and I made the journey up on Tuesday afternoon. On arrival there was just one other chap present who was fishing until about 11pm. I opted to fish a few swims up from him on a section known as 'The Flats'.

Pixham on the Severn and lots of new challenges!

This is an area of low, exposed bank, made up of hard mud covered in low water grass. A great spot to put up my brolly and bed for the 2 nights. The swim offers great accessibility to a very large expense of open water area. I started off casting one long to a gravel section I found towards the far shelf and put the other in the middle gutter which has a depth of about 12 feet I reckon.

The action was almost non stop from Bream and by 8pm I was already about 6 fish up! Each one was a real chunk though and I don't honestly think I've ever caught so many large bream! My first barbel came around 11pm and a sprightly 7lb barbel finally graced my net! My first 'proper' barbel from the river at last!

Lovely jubley!

The fishing stayed hectic all night and 1 bream after another found the back of the net. The barbel seemed a little off the feed so I started to introduce a few balls of groundbait lower down the swim but just up from a large mid river snag that apparently holds the fish.

The fishing in the day was little slower than at night so I made the choice to sleep a bit in the day and target the fish in their feeding period. This proved successful and the next evening saw me land just 4 bream to a total of 8 barbel! Much better figures!

What a back drop!

The other thing I did to slow down the bream was to just ignore any bite that didn't take line from the reel and I opted to fish a large wide gape 6 hook, long hair rig and a 20mm hook bait! This certainly slowed the bream down. It may have hindered my chances with the barbel but it did allow me to keep a bait in the water for a longer period of time. I found out to my dismay that there is a large amount of logs and tree debris in that particular swim. It's obviously been washed up in the winter floods and has been deposited on the shelf of the inside marginal area. This makes playing fish very hazardous at the best of times. The only way to get them in seemed to be to strike, pull like crazy and get the rod as high as possible! Bully boy tactics that I hate to employ but they seemed to be needed in this case.

9lb 1oz of River Severn power!!!!

The best fish of the trip turned out to be very chunky 9lb 1oz fish. This particular fish was rather recognizable as it had a split tail fin. Lee had also caught it a few times at a similar weight over the prior weeks.

One of 19 bream to 7lb 14oz!!!

Right, lots to do....there's some great bait orders coming in again and there's quite a few days guiding booked in over the next week or two....busy, busy!

Tight lines all
K
x

Yet more Wye loveliness!

Hi all.

Great fun and masses of barbel to catch!

This last 2 weeks has been unquestionable one of the best of my river fishing career with yet more wonderful fishing chances and superb fish caught.

As I spoke about in my last blog update, Bob and I paid a visit to a section of the Wye where there are large numbers of fish present. The numbers tend to outweigh the size of the fish and the averages are between a pound and 6 pound in weight.

We met up at the river just after sunrise and headed down to our chosen spot at the end of the beat. It's a rather quick and shallow section of river, abundant with rocks, weed and turbulent water. This highly oxygenated water seems to make it highly prized by the many barbel and chub that live under the surface.

The stamp of fish was a little smaller than usual

Bob decided to get straight onto larger baits and tactics in a bid to get amongst the bigger fish. I opted on the other hand to fish much smaller and lighter tactics after anything I could muster up to feed. I also decided to fish it in a totally different manner to my usual way of fishing, in that I had taken my seat box and platform as opposed to my usual lazy chair tactics.

I waded my setup out into the faster water and got it positioned so that I had good open access to the streamy water in front of me. I have to say at this point that it was only due to talking to my friend
Dave Harrell that I had got the idea of tackling it like this for a change.

We chatted on the phone a little while back and also at the BS conference a few weeks back about feeder and float tactics and how much of these tactics had been almost forgotten these days and replaced by much bigger fish tactics. I'd like at this opportunity to convey much congratulations to Dave as he is on his way to winning yet more highly prized river comps and I look forward as ever to seeing him quash the competition with his very own incredible style of approach! Good muck matey! If you have ten minutes free time then pop over to Dave's pages and have a read! Great bloke with some fantastic tips that you cannot fail to learn from!

http://www.daveharrellangling.com/

http://www.daveharrellangling.com/


Anyway back to my day with Bob and after setting up a 5oz feeder with an 8lb hooklength. I was away on my first cast with a nice 2lb barbel. The fish came straight out of the very fast water in front and despite the water being exceptionally low and clear, it was still just only possible to hold down the bottom with the 5ozs!

The first fish was followed up by another on the next cast of around the same stamp. The action continued pretty much all morning and by midday I had around 12 barbel banked and a nice chub of about 4lbs as well. Bob on the other hand had struggled on the bigger baits and was only 1 or 2 fish in by now.

At last a better stamp for Bob!

He wasn't overly bothered as he was more interested in the better sized fish. Anyway, things progressed well throughout the day and by 7pm I had taken 21 barbel to just under 7lbs and Bob had had 10 to about 6lbs. This was a record amount of barbel in a day for myself and Bob and we were now looking forward to packing in and moving ten minutes down river to a more big fish prolific section for the evening period.

After the quick move we dropped into a great little spot that's been fishing very well of recent and to be honest, I wasn't intending on fishing myself. All I wanted was for Bob to get himself a big old kipper to finish the day on. Bearing this in mind I fished just one rod as Bob wanted me to fish as well. I decided that which ever rod went first I'd let Bob take. Needless to say it was my rod twice in a row that produced the first of the evening and 2 nice but slightly below average stamp 6lbers found the net for Bob. He then insisted I take my own rod from then on.....

The next bites fortunately came to Bobs rods and he landed 3 more great fish to just over 8lbs. Right result for the day which put him up to 15 barbel. In the mean time we had moved Bobs upstream rod into the spot that I had taken the fish at the start as the upstream spot hadn't produced a twitch all evening.

Typically this then produced a 9lb fish for me and just as we were about to call it a day it yielded the biggest of the day at 10lb 8oz! Typical as I wanted Bob to catch it! Nevermind, I think Bob would agree with me when I say that we had a bloody great day all told and it was full of laughter, plenty of hot coffee and even more wonderful fish!

The following evening and after just a couple of hours poor sleep due to my never ending cold! Mathew and I decided to go out for a few hours after work. Mats not had the chance to do much barbelling since the start of the season and despite 3 trips out he was still only on 6 barbel for the season albeit one of them a new PB double of 10lb 1oz.

Well, we dropped in to two swims with Mat taking the down stream option and hopefully the better of the two spots as he really wanted to catch another big old double.

It took a little while before things started to pick up and Mat was first up with a nice one around 7lbs. This was quickly followed up with a better one of 9lb 9oz and a very happy Mathew! I on the other hand couldn't tempt a twitch! I was getting a touch despondent and despite banking a nice 4lb chub, I felt my chances of a barbel were almost out the window for the evening.

Mathew then had another nice one of 8lb 1oz and I was feeling like it was time to pack away. I had had 2 lost chances with what I think were small chub and it wasn't before almost packing up that I had my first proper chance with a nice specimen of 9lb 1oz. A very hard earned fish for a tougher evenings fishing.

Mat had already packed away now as he had got into a bit of a pickle with the last fish and some of his line was damaged and beyond repair. I was almost ready to leave and as we were about to retrieve the last of my two rods, it hooped over signaling 1 last chance fish on the end!

Well in Mathew boy!

The fight was spectacular and no less than heart stopping at numerous points as the fish was hell bent on weeding me up and trying to snag me on a fallen tree! I had to slack line the fish on 3 occasions to get it to come free from the snag and it took much longer than I would have liked to get it in.

At 10lb 7oz though and my 6th double of the season....I didn't really care either way whether it had taken 10 seconds to get in or 10 minutes! I was elated!

I've got a ton of things coming up over the next four weeks, lots of guided days with some great clients and maybe just a few days of fishing on my own on a new water on the River Severn! Looking forward to that immensely! Tight lines to you all and I hope your all enjoying your summer holidays and the wonderful fishing that seems to be prevalent at the moment!

Double number 6 for the season! Get in!

Tightest of lines
Keith
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