Well the river season has finally started and as I promised in my previous post, my first outing was yesterday on my beloved river Kennet. The river was carrying a lot of extra water due to the recent rain and was nicely coloured, not the usual grey/brown (caused I believe by boats on the canal) but a more healthy, earthy brown due to soil being washed in by the rain.
My enthusiasm soared as I drove from stretch to stretch but all my favourite swims were taken. I have rarely seen the Wasing Estate so busy. I had anticipated this however and my Toyota 4x4 was fully loaded with enough tackle to cover most eventualities (some people will ask “What’s new, isn’t it always?”). I have long had the ambition to fish the Kennet with a pole and maybe catch a barbel on one and so the new pole gear I had bought from Les was also in the back of my “truck”.
It may have been fate but the swim I had always considered most suitable for fishing for barbel on the pole was vacant. This is the swim in the car park just above Brimpton bridge where there is a bit of slack water on the opposite bank on the inside of a bend, here the river narrows to about nine metres, a comfortable length to fish a pole. This part of the river is virtually snag free and provides plenty of room to play a fish. The decision, it seems, had been made for me.
I set up a Browning pole with a power top three fitted with what Les had informed me was a number fourteen elastic, the main line was 6.6lb (.18mm) and the hook lenth 5.5lb (.16mm) both Silstar Match Team. The hook was a size twelve Mustad with a small bait band on a hair tied with a knotless knot. The float was a new experience for me, it was a lollipop type, Desque made by Sensas and carrying 6gms.
I had experimented with this type of float when I used to fish the river Thames from a boat, it is designed to enable you to hold the float still in flowing water presenting the bait stationary and I learned that they have to be over shotted to prevent them riding up in the current, so much so that only the pressure of the current is holding the float on the surface. This is how I set up the float with a large olivette and a string of shot about a foot from the hook with the last six inches of line pinned to the bottom with two number six shot.
I was able to introduce hemp, maggots, casters and small mixed pellets with a bait dropper on this powerful pole set up and I did this regularly over the next hour. Meanwhile I set up another pole with 8-10 elastic and trotted an ordinary river pole float along the crease near the far bank, this provided a lot of fun with the small chub, dace, bleak and gudgeon which readily took my maggot and caster hook baits.
Martin James, who I know from years ago, turned up and checked my ticket and we had a little chat. He expressed the opinion that barbel should not be caught on the pole as landing them takes so long they are exhausted when returned. This caused me some concern as he is a very knowledgeable angler and I respect his opinion, so I resolved to be extra careful when returning any barbel I caught. I am no stranger to nursing barbel in the shallows for up to twenty minutes when caught on normal tackle, particularly in warm weather with low oxygen levels.
Shortly after Martin left I caught a couple of slightly larger chub, still under a pound and this is often the sign that the bigger fish are moving in. I put some more feed into the slack water on the far bank and put an 8mm halibut pellet into the bait band on the Browning pole. I shipped out the rig so that it settled just off the main current and put the pole in the rest.
I was just enjoying not having to hold a heavy pole while trotting and had just lit a cigarette (yes, I know it’s bad for you but you’ve got to die of something!) when the float tore away, the tip of the pole bent alarmingly and metres of elastic shot out. I found myself playing a very powerful fish. It felt much bigger than the three or four pound fish I had hoped for.
There are people who will tell you that playing fish on elastic is easy and that you are nothing more than a counter weight on the other end of the pole but I found that I needed all my skill to keep in touch with this fish and was soon grateful for my stillwater experience with big fish on the pole and for all the advice I have had from good pole anglers of my aquaintance (you know who you are).
I will admit that it seemed to take longer to get some sort of control over this fish than it would have done on my normal barbel float tackle but then the centrepins that I favour are very effective fish playing tools. When I saw the fish for the first time I was amazed at the size and then disaster struck.
Instead of my normal landing net with the heavy Conoflex duty telescopic pole I had a take-apart match landing net pole on which the last foot before the net can be removed after netting to facilitate unhooking the fish over the keepnet. When I put the net into the fast water at my feet in preparation for netting the fish the current removed this last foot, along with my net and swept it down stream. I was then grateful that the beat was so crowded and I was able to call to the chap upstream of me to lend me his net. Thanks Gordon!
The fish weighed 9lb 5ozs and was in beautiful condition if a little slim, certainly she will be double figures in the winter.
I rested her in the landing net in the current prior to weighing her and taking this photograph, mindful of what Martin had said and then quickly carried her in a weighing sling to a shallow stretch just up stream where I expected to have to nurse her back to strength in the current. I had no sooner removed her from the sling in the water and turned her upright and into the current when she tore herself free of my hands and powered upstream and away from me, not what I expected at all. I kept a close watch for a few minutes in case she reappeared, belly up, but saw no more sign of her.
Gordon kept an eye on my tackle while I drove to the nearest tackle shop and bought a new landing net, I had my usual pole in my rod bag. Before I went I put some more bait in with a bait dropper and did the same on my return.
After lunch I had a bit more fun with the other, lighter, pole rig and caught some more small fish and then went back to the slack on the bend with the heavy rig and another halibut pellet. I had fulfilled my ambition to catch a barbel on the pole and did not expect much more from what had already become a “red letter day”. Once again shortly after placing the rig, the elastic was steaming from the arched pole tip and I was into another big fish. This time I had the lessons learned from the last fish in my armoury and was able to make a better job of handling the tackle and the fish was in the net a little sooner. She weighed 9lb 3ozs but was cetainly a different fish as some marks around her anal fin (presumably caused by recent spawning) proved.
I fished on afterwards but pulled the hook out of a fish just before dark but was more than happy with my first day back on the river.
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