Severn Stoke - 29th November 2014

The peg

Well, it's been a few weeks now since my last post, unfortunately my dad passed away a few weeks ago following a short illness, so that kept me away from the bank. Before his illness, I had intended

to give the Lower Severn some serious time, so, now that I am the other side of it, I decided to try Severn Stoke, below the car park.

The river was in good trim, down to about 3 feet up after being 6 feet up during the week. The air temp was also very good, around 12c, and I was fishing by 1.15pm in glorious sunshine. I started with a big lump of meat on the downstream rod, with my ever faithful double elips on the upstream one. It wasn't long before I had a bite, which surprised me a little, a savage pull too. Not a barbel though unfortunately, but a nice chub, probably around 2.5lb. Not a bad start though.

On the strength of this, I decided to drop the meat, and switch the downstream rod to pellet too,

A welcome chub

trying some of the sonubait spicy sausage pellets that had been recommended. This turned out to be a great decision, as after around 20 minutes, the same rod whacked over and I was into a barbel, a hard fighting one too, it went off on several screaming run, before finding a snag under my feet.

After a bit of pressure, and then slack line, the fish came out of the snag, and I managed to land it, a fine looking fish of 8.12, my very first lower Severn barbel!!!

A beautiful Lower Severn fish

That proved to be it though, but a near 9 pounder at the end of November is a result in anyones book.

Happy days!






See the video to this session here:-

Another Northwood session, 2nd November

I'm beginning to wonder whether I should rename this blog 'Northwood Barbeller', as the venue has seen lots of attention from myself over these last few weeks, and has taken up most of the posts of this new blog of mine. Fear not though, I DO fish other venues apart from this one!!!

Anyway, I was on the bank at midday, doing six hours into dark, and with stories of big fish coming off the river, I had high hopes. I started 100 yards above the bridge, what a mistake that proved to be....three hours without a touch, and the swim also proving to be a snag-pit, four times snagged up losing hooks.

Hairy moments

At 3pm, I decided a move was in order, and surprise, surprise, I jumped back onto the peg above the bridge again. I changed things around a bit, a pellet rod, and the other with a huge chunk of meat on it. 

It was 4.30pm when the pellet rod went off, and 4.31pm when the meat rod did the same. A double hook-up. I've had a few of these now, and those of you who've never had it happen, it's a real pain in the proverbial. The only thing you can do is make the best of it. My approach is to leave the baitrunner engaged on the second rod, while you play the first fish. Once the first fish is in the net, I unhook it, and leave it to rest (I use a big net to facilitate this), and then i go about playing the other fish. Hopefully, I can net that too, and it's a case of resting and returning both fish together.

One of two from the day

In this case, one fish was about 5lb, the other around 6lb, and although I fished into dark, that proved to be the only barbel action of the day, with a small chub gracing the net before I went home.

No big fish sadly, but can't moan, it wasn't a blank!!