Natashas first Barbel!

Lovely times on the river together...

What a hot few days it's been here in the UK! Wow! I've enjoyed the weather but I can't help feeling it would be nice to see a little more flow and colour in the river. Times have been hard down on my club stretch and just about all of the Wye has fished rather difficultly during sunlight hours. The problem as I see it at my club section is that its on average 6-8 feet deep with just a long straight area of about 1.5miles with no bends, weirs or any real variations in current.

This means that in low water conditions the section is like a bloody canal! This means there's absolutely bugger all oxygen within the water at the best of times. Now, I'm no expert on this and I'm sure that some of you know a hell of a lot more than me on this and have much better explanations for the lack of feeding activity. But, here's my opinion on it........Bear with me on this now......

During darkness the sun is not available to the weed growth within the river, so of course there is no photosynthesis taking place. (Oxygen production through plants..... to those less educated!) When this happens within particular stretches, such as our club section that have zero flow, the barbel and other species are almost dormant. The main bite time is almost always around 3pm onwards until darkness.

Low, clear water...not the most productive of times.

I've been almost totally unable to get bites during the day right from first light onwards until that time. Evenings have been okay up until total darkness at which point the fish again shut off. The weed growth then obviously consumes the oxygen throughout darkness, leaving the fish sapped until later in the day.....I can only put this down to the lack of oxygen within the water. I cannot think of any other reasons?

Anyway, enough of all that mumbo jumbo stuff.....I took my youngest down the Wye for a few hours evening fishing last night and albeit the fishing was rather difficult due to the seriously low conditions, we did find a few odd fish. I started her off with a feeder rig and a dumbell River Monster boilie and we had a cast around the swim for an hour searching out likely looking spots for the fish. It took a little while before the first bite but eventually she got her first ever chub.

A happy girl with her first ever decent chub!

At around a pound in weight it wasn't likely to break any records but she was over the moon with her first of the species. The next cast produced another slightly better one and then things went quiet again for about 40 mins. It was tough going trying to find the fish and bites were very spasmodic to say the least!

Just as the light was fading things perked up a little and she unfortunately lost the first barbel to a cut off on a sharp under water rock. Not to be too put down by it we tackled back up and recast to a spot slightly closer to us. The result was almost instantaneous and before we knew it she was hooked into a better chub of just under 4lbs.

Another cast into the same area resulted in the rod hooping over in typical Wye Barbel style. Natasha needed a little help controlling the beast as it made its merry way around the swim and she did all she could to keep herself from being pulled over at times!

What it's all about for me! Look at that grin! 8lb 2oz Barbel for Natasha.....wonderful!

After about 5 minutes of battling it out for supremacy Natasha finally sunk the net under her first ever barbel! She was so excited when she saw how big it was.....on the scales it went 8lb 2oz. A totally over the moon little miss posed with her trophy. I think she wants to go out barbel fishing again rather soon now!

Keith x