Buying a Bite

I have 2 rules for Fridays: Friday is catch up day and if I finish catching up before lunch I go fishing. Well this Friday I finished all my outstanding work by 11.00am so I had to go fishing! I'd already decided that I was going to fish for barbel and, given the state of the rivers up here, I thought that the river Don might give me the best chance of a fish. To me low clear rivers mean either maggot or caster fshing and so I stopped off on the way and bought a couple of pints of maggots.

As expected the Don was low, but it was also as clear as I've seen it and my confidence was somewhat dented. Still, there's no point in giving up without a fight! I crept into a swim and tackled up with a medium Kamasan Black Cap feeder, a long .22mm hook length and a size 14 Animal Spade. The intention was to cast the feeder every 15 minutes and keep a steady trickle of lose fed maggots going in over the top of it.

Nothing happened for the first hour, then the tip twitched and pulled slowly round. It was a barbel of 8lb 9oz - a good start!



I took this snap just as she left the net.

By now the clouds had cleared and day brightened considerably. Not good news. I now started to get bites from small fish and over the next hour and a half I had a sucession of dace and small roach. Then the swim went quiet. I was sure it was a barbel and my hand hovered over the rod butt. After half an hour without any indication I decided to do something positive. I retreived and cut off the .22mm hook length and retied a longer .18mm one, replacing the silver Animal Spade with a size 14 Drennan Super Specialist, a slightly smaller and considerably duller hook.

I refilled the feeder and swung it back into the swim, feathering it as it hit the water to reduce the splash. Within 5 minutes the tip pulled smoothly round and I was gingerly playing a good barbel. Here it is just below the surface as I brought it to the net.



It weighed 8lb 8oz.

As the evening drew in I switched to a pellet wrapped in paste. I gave it until 8 o'clock, but except for a gentle pull just as it got dark I had no more indications.

A good day!