Belmont

I’m obviously still trying to adjust/recover from the shock of Sunday’s 4.00am start and 240 mile round trip, so Wednesday saw me wide awake at 5.30am. But not an issue, because I was planning a trip to the mighty Wye to practice my Barbel fishing and I was up and about early enough to avoid the Hereford traffic jam.

So I was parked up at the Pumphouse by 7.15pm (the traffic was noticeably lighter. COVID-19 isn’t all bad!!), and had the pick of the Ferry Field pegs, which I should have taken as a warning as these are normally Barbel angler central. Anyway, I opted for peg 40 just above the Ferry steps and set up to catch some whiskers.

The river still had some flow but was fairly clear, and disappointingly it was a lot sunnier than I had expected, although it did cloud over later. Anyway, I mixed together a small amount of Hemp & Hali crush, 3mm and 4mm Halibut pellets and Hemp……actually, not the Hemp, I’d forgotten it. So just groundbait and pellets then, and introduced them via a medium cage feeder with a hair-rigged 8mm Halibut pellet. Picked a line 2/3rds over and marked up with a chinagraph pencil so that I didn’t need to clip up….simples. And I waited……..and waited…….and waited………I actually did have a response, and managed to strangle a small Perch on the pellet, which was a first for me.

A little while later I had another bite……

But I was starting to wonder whether this pellet fishing for Barbel was a bit more complicated than it seemed. Mainly subtle stuff…….for example like how to get a bite off a Barbel………

I also had a Chublet on the pellet so I was really bagging! I opened a tin of meat and had a play around with the meat feeder, which got me a second Chublet, and with the impact bomb which looked very good but was totally ineffective. I’d spoken with Johnny Mac and Pete ‘voice of doom’ Pembridge who both confirmed that it had fished well during the recent lift but most of the stretches had been hammered and weren’t producing. So I decided that I’d stick it out until 12.00pm and, wonder of wonders, at 11.50am I had an absolute classic Barbel rap and found myself playing a kitten of about 4Lbs or so.

So, 4Lbs Barbel, big deal! But the whole experience from classic drop-back through initial run downstream through to late runs to avoid the net reminded me of exactly why, should I ever decide to pack in coarse match fishing, then Barbel fishing would be the only alternative option that would interest me in any way.

So, early days and in hindsight I understand why I was able to rock up and grab the best peg on the Ferry Field without competition. I need to sort out some more groundbait, tie up some more hooks and buy a stack of meat but other than that I feel as if I’m set up now and just need more bank time over the next few weeks.