PBRUBADUB2

Monday morning saw similar high pressure mist, and a peak day (FM-2) perfect big chub conditions, the decision was taken to target them. The barbel in this swim are in a mid river gully and cannot be drawn into the under the rod slack, sometimes the chub would "mess about" with the meat on the downstream rod. Giving little plucks on it until they dragged the hooklink into a snag, or removed the meat from the hair. Putting a critically balanced bobbing on the rod, to let them run is futile in this swim as the snags are all over the place, and the flow too great. The couple of chub I had previously taken were 5lbers that had merely slipped up. The best chance of a real "big un" would be to use the slack, as there is a good run from it to the nearest snag. Thus a good chance that with a little to no resistance set up the fish would actually take the bait after running a few yards. For several sessions I had periodically put bits of meat into this slack with no intention of putting a hookbait in until "everything" was right...........

Arriving at 10ish the river was clear, and the mist was lifting. A one inch bit of meat, with the hook buried, not wanting any cagey old chub to feel a hook on a hair rigged bait and spit it, was lowered into the slack tight to the bank and a few feet of slack given out, then a cut down washing up bottle top bobbing was hung 4ft below the rod.

The second maggot feeder rod was cast into barbel gully, though with the high pressure misty atmosphere I thought there would be more chance of shaking hands with the pope(not Steve) than of catching a barbel, certainly a decent one. The rod was off straight away and a nice cock dace reeled in, the feeder rod became very busy with a dace every 2-3 minutes. The mist totally lifted around 11.30. Yesterdays chub in the match was around 11.30, you will recall, so I was looking for the meat rod to go about 12.10ish (difference of moon minus a few minutes) if it was going to go. Several more decent dace were taken as soon as the feeder hit bottom, until 12.06 when a slight breeze developed. At the same time the slack from the top of the meat rod began to run out and the bobbing started to raise fairly quickly. When it was about 18inches from the rod, I carefully picked the rod up(making sure to not tension the line) and followed the fish with the rod top giving it yet more slack, oftentimes at this point one will frustratingly strike into nothing! This time however, the strike met with a nice running resistance. For a while it felt like I was playing a 6lb barbel that was in slow motion! When I got it back to the slack and saw the size of it, I was quite shocked!. It then made a final lunge into the depths of the slack and for fear of pulling the hook I let it take line under slight tension with the thumb slightly on the rim of the pin. It was then carefully pumped back to the suface and pulled first time into the safety of the landing net............... So much again for dusk, low light levels and coloured water being the best time for specimen fish, water temp was 8oc on arrival, and the same at 17.00 when I packed in (with no barbel). So again apart from being warm enough for activity/feeding to take place, it took no part in triggering this fish to feed. The chub the previous day during the match came at a peak time using match gear, and match style tactics and baiting.

One in a lifetime and the catch I am most proud of in my 40+ years of angling.

On Sunday afternoon I wandered down the river to see how the match was going, evidently not that brilliant given ideal conditions (grim day) someone had taken a chub at about 11.30 I was told. Because of the high pressure mist and only one chub caught, I deemed that a key point, in other words because of the dodgy atmospohere, chub were feeding on the key points when barbel should have been. If mondays weather was to be the same then that info could be put to good use, regarding BIG chub which I knew were in the swim I had been fishing. The week before a bloke had a 5.7 at 11.26 in the peg above me, the following day I had a 5.3 at 12.16, the exact moon difference and time I was looking at!