If they won’t come to me, ill come to them

12/09/10 – Vampire nights

Sunday evening I decided to target a local stretch of the River Dee which is fast becoming a river that is on my mind frequently. There’s not a lot known about the fish in the Dee after the fish kill so who knows for sure whats in its depths and for that reason alone I cant help but keep off there. So Sunday evening was going to be spent fishing a tasty looking marginal raft hopfully for a barbel or maybe even a carp


Both rods out on the Dee

Now up until this session I was having full faith in Sonu baits soft hook able pellets which I hair rig on, but for some reason every time I was reeling in the pellet was gone, not sure if little fish were just constantly eating away at it but I just couldn’t get them to stay on. I decided to switch both rods over to some 10mm boilies but before I had chance I had a screamer on the right hand rod, initially I thought it was a small chub but was soon greeted with an eel!!! Now I don’t usually mind eels but I hate bootlaces and I hate trying to unhook them

My attempt wasn’t very good and mr eel found his way all over my chair


Grrrrr pesky critters!!! Didn’t even give the feeder time to empty!!

I haven’t done a lot of time fishing the dee for its barbel so was playing it the same way with the severn hoping that they come on the feed into dark, that means warm cloths, head torch and isotopes


Lovely place to be in the dark, only person for miles around patiently waiting for the one

I fished from 6pm until 11pm with only the eel for my troubles but I don’t regret going because its only 20 mins away and iv got the chance of catching something special, I just have to sit it out a little longer.

And that brings me to the end of summer, whilst I was out there was a constant stream of leaves heading down stream which means autumn is on its way which for me means more barbel fishing into dark, bream fishing also in the dark and maybe a few more carp stalking sessions before they shut shop for the winter.


My indulgence for the end of summer, Fruit cider and sponge cake what could say goodbye better.

18/09/10 - If they won’t come to me, ill come to them

Saturday was set to be my main fishing adventure this weekend and I was planning on heading down the severn. With doing loads of over time in work id only been to the gym once last week so I wanted to spend the day moving from swim to swim to try and burn a few calories. Id planned on starting at 6am on a stretch I know produces in the morning then move onto another stretch just up the road and work my way along there

So to get down the river and fishing by 6am meant a 5am wake up


On the river before the sun was up. Best time of day to be out

The river was tea coloured and up by a couple of feet but it had been up a lot more the past few days so i was just on the end of the flood, these are my favourite conditions for barbel though and you can often catch them all day in floods


Couple of rubber ducks that came down in the flood

On this stretch I had 3 areas to target and decided to spend an hour in each swim to see if I could tempt any fish to take big meat or pellets. With the recent floods though a couple of swims I did want to get to were inaccessible because of the steep banks and slippery mudd which proved to be a problem throughout the session


This lark isn’t for you carp boys

By 11am the sun was blazing down and I scrambled my way into the very last peg on the stretch. The river really narrowed up hear and the river went straight underneath a tree that was hanging into the water, so a cast mid river would hopefully has my feeder swing around and settle right underneath it and into the barbels lair!!

The result of my fine casting, what im going to class as the start of my barbel season


4lb of bullet shaped autumn gold

I sat it out a little longer to see if there were anymore shoal fish hanging around before jumping in the car and moving upstream and the next part of the session


My attempt at travelling light, small chair, net, 2 rods and bag

Now I don’t know this section very well but I do no of a couple of areas that I really fancy to throw up a couple of fish so I intended on jumping in those first. But the best layed plans


That’s those swims out the window because I’m not going through there

Rats!! So upstream I went in search of better fortune but I never found any. The next few hours really was a grueler. The further upstream I went the less I fancied the swims, the banks were getting steaper with more vegetation so they were exactly difficult to get to with made up rods


The sort of swims I had to venture into to fish, it doesn’t look like it but on the right hand side lead to this


Fishy bliss and barbel heaven

The weather report for the weekend was bob on and by 4pm the rain kicked in and this teamed up with the canoeists to dampen my spirits I decided to call it a session

Im classing one barbel off the upper though in the day an achievement. I spent lots of hours now blanking in the dark on the upper so just one fish is magic

Conclusion

barbel really are now on my agenda so more trips to the dee and severn no doubt teaming up with my angling guru and co Wrexham supporter Mr Stu Maddocks. Bream though I do need a think, there’s always lake55 to see what bream will show there, there’s the flash for the big shoal of doubles or there’s always old one eye on the sindy lake. But he really is a crafty one so I will need to put some time and effort in for him. Until next week


I remembered why I fish in the dark