Tag Archives: 10lb barbel

It’s a now a month since the rivers closed and I’m just getting around to typing up my ‘end of season round-up’ post.  I don’t think I’ve fully grasped the concept of a blog!  Well, better late than never, I suppose… Somehow I’ve managed to once again have a poor end to the season.  What’s made this one different to previous seasons is that it followed a poor middle of the season and a disappointing start to the season too!Okay, so I haven’t had as many hours on the bank since November as I wanted, but the efforts I did make had brought me “0” fish on the bank since November too!  A few evening sessions fishing for zander, a few of the same after barbel (in seemingly ideal conditions, too) and an all-day chub session all resulted in a single half-hearted bite and no fish hooked or landed. In February I escaped the horrendous floods by heading to a canal which manages to remain clear no matter what the conditions.  It was a slow day during which I fished static deadbaits, wobbled deadbaits and lures, which all generated very little interest.  Finally a float-legered sardine I’d cast tight to a …

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New Years resolution:  Update my blog more regularly! Three-quarters of the river season has already flown by since I last wrote, which is extremely slack of me, but hopefully there are still a few people out there interested in reading, so I’ll update on how my Summer fishing went and then I plan to do a small post on what I’ve done since (unfortunately not many fish to write about since November!), by which point I should be back in the habit of writing on here more regularly. The good news is that the fishing I did over the Summer was generally excellent!  I concentrated on a single river, the Derbyshire Derwent, and on a single species, Barbel. The regular rain certainly helped this Summer, keeping the levels topped up and keeping the barbel feeding confidently.  So many times in the past 4 or 5 seasons, I’ve heard anglers moaning – on the bank and on the internet – about the low river levels making barbel fishing difficult.  Personally, I never moaned because I still managed to find a good few fish, but I must say that sport was definitely better this season with a bit of extra water and …

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How great it’s been to sit by a river in this glorious heat to while away an evening or two!  After such a cold, long, snowy winter I’m not really surprised that the extremes of weather have gone full circle and now some of the reservoirs are dangerously empty!  Normally with such dry and bright conditions the fishing is difficult but I’ve either been doing something really right (granted, I have changed a lot of my setup) or I’ve been extremely lucky (or more probably a bit of both) in my first couple of sessions of the season. I fished last Tuesday & Wednesday evenings on the River Dove for my first sessions of the new season and unusually, I managed to hit the ground running!  The first evening I only had a couple of hours fishing because I was so disorganised, I didn’t cast a line until half past 9!  The very first cast I had some tip rattles on my upstream rod which seemed like a bite given by a chub mouthing the bait.  After the bite continuing for a good few seconds I struck but failed to connect.  Next cast, a similar but more forceful bite resulted in a …

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