My monthly fishing diary…
Week 1
The annual Nottingham Piscatorial Speakers Evening was taking place on Wednesday evening and I quite fancied popping along to listen to Julian Barnes. Boy, has that guy caught some big Trent barbel! It was also a chance to catch up with a load of friends I’ve not seen much of this season, what with me being tied up with all things transplant-related. Not one to waste an opportunity, I also drove down to the river to spend a few hours having a bash on the seriously flooded Trent. Despite the height and colour, conditions were pretty much perfect for catching barbel, providing I could find a sufficiently sheltered swim. I wasn’t surprised to find the river busy, but what I was surprised by was to find it was nearly lunch time and one of my prime go-to flood swims was vacant! The swim had obviously seen plenty of attention in the past couple of weeks yet I couldn’t help but fancy my chances in the conditions – river high and coloured, with the bushes creating a lovely crease a couple of rod lengths out over a gravel patch. A 4oz feeder loaded with pellets, broken boilies and some fishmeal groundbait didn’t budge. I could probably have gone lighter, but I wanted my bait pinned down hard as a moving feeder will inevitably find a snag before too long. Two glugged boilies hair-rigged to a size 6 hook on 10lb nylon was as fancy as I needed to go. It was then just a case of packing the feeder fairly tightly so the payload didn’t wash out too quickly, then sitting back patiently. I planned to leave it out for 45 minutes on that first cast and just as the seconds ticked down to reeling it back in, over went the tip. It was only a ‘splasher’ but you don’t turn up your nose at any barbel in such conditions. Forty five minutes later the rod tip banged but somehow the boilie had slid back up the hair and masked my hook. How frustrating!
Not long afterwards the rod was away again, with a better fish this time. Just my luck that the gloom was now gathering and my camera remote decided to play up, so the picture you see is a rushed one taken on my phone.
Week 2
Aweek on and the Trent was not only still in flood, but a good foot or so higher than last time. Even local lakes were now flooded, and I really didn’t fancy the canals, so it was back to the river with my good friend Mark Gregory in tow. Mark runs several fisheries and affords me pretty much unrestricted access so it was a chance to pay back the hospitality and take him along as my guest for a change. It was to be a social session with two of us sharing a swim and putting the world to rights. Acase of find a bit of s
