Graham with his 13lb 8oz Dove barbel (click for bigger picture)
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All the clichés about lightning not striking the same place twice and when one bus comes along……… Well, all of them came to mind the other day when my landing net was slipped under a 13lb 8oz Dove barbel, my second biggest barbel, and only 8oz smaller than my best ever, from the same stretch only three short weeks ago.
The river was up a few inches and carrying some colour; not anything like a real flood, but much, much better than a low, clear river.
I tackled up in the usual way - Harrison Chimera rod, 12lb Krystonite main line, 12lb Sufix Invisiline hooklink, but this time with a Korda Running Rig set-up I'm currently testing for a review.
I decided to fish a swim I hadn't tried before. It neighbours swims I have fished a few times and I suspected it wouldn't be any different to those. But following a bit of poking around I found it was just an inch or two deeper a little closer in than the others. Probably not enough difference to make any difference, but you always have that feeling 'you never know.' I went along with my feeling and fished just that little closer than I normally do in the neighbouring swims.
I fished a different bait too, a 15mm Dynamite Baits Marine Halibut boilie that I'd had soaking for a few days in a dip of the same make. I fed the swim with half a dozen baitdroppers of hemp and halibut pellets and then cast in my feederful of soaked pellets, mixed so that it would trickle feed the swim for about five minutes before emptying.
My mate Dave Colclough was fishing two swims upstream and Geoff Dace, an experienced and friendly fellow barbel angler, who we meet along the stretch occasionally, fishing two swims below me.
I had two eight-pounders in the next couple of hours, while Dave caught a few chub.
Dusk crept up on us, and then the darkness seemed to fall suddenly. We had heard on the radio that following an accident there was a massive tailback on the M6 and a glut of traffic on the A34 that had escaped the motorway. Both of which affected our own routes to home. So we decided to stay longer than we normally do to see if the jams would clear up.
Ten minutes later and I was attached to a big fish that hugged the bottom in mid-river. I let it stay there while it tired, or that was the theory for this one didn't want to play ball and several times headed off for the snags along the far bank. Each time I had to clamp down and turn it, hoping like hell the tackle wouldn't let me down or the hook lose its hold.
In five minutes or so, and seeming more like five hours, the fish slipped into the landing net and it was such a relief to see it engulfed in the folds of the mesh as I carried it up the bank to the weigh sling. It was while carrying it I realised that this was no run of the mill double from the Dove, this was something special. Geoff and Dave were stood behind me as I'd played the fish, and although the three of us knew it was a good fish, we hadn't seen enough of it to guesstimate a weight. We knew it was going to make a double, but that was about it.
Geoff with his 10lb 8oz Dove barbel (click for bigger picture)
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As it lay in the landing net mesh we each tossed a few weights around, with me saying, "at least a big eleven," and Dave and Geoff shaking their heads and muttering things like, “bigger'n that, it's ******* massive!”
It was indeed a lovely fish, with broad shoulders and a deep belly, but it was still a shock as Dave and Geoff looked at the green glow of the backlit digital scales (gleefully not letting me see them) and declared it to weigh 13lb 8oz. They turned the scales round and I saw those magic figures. Surely it couldn't be happening again? Not another unbelievable day?
Well, maybe not the dream day Dave and I had enjoyed on the Dove less than a month ago (click on the link below), but certainly one hell of a session for me. In the space of three wonderful weeks I'd copped six Dove doubles, with three of them being bigger than anything I'd previously caught from this great river.
Just to put the icing on the cake, right at the death of packing up a few minutes later, I netted a 10lb 8oz barbel for Geoff that was one of the best looking barbel I've ever seen. Short, deep and stocky. You couldn't have made a better one had you tried.
What made it all the sweeter, Geoff's the same age as me. There's hope for us old buggers yet!
Peter Jacobs
