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
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