The wait is over......

Well, it's been a long wait, and I had intended to wait until Friday before my first new season foray, but I found myself unable to wait beyond the 16th, so was out on day 2, the 17th. With the river at normal level, and quite clear, I imagined it might be a tad tricky, so a visit to one of my banker swims at Knowle Sands on the mid-Severn was my place of choice. With only one car on the car park, I was confident of getting a decent swim, and the swim I wanted was available.

My attack plan was boilies. This is something I'm looking to work on this season, in the hope of

First of the season

picking up some better fish, so two rods, with boilies, and PVA bags with boilie bits in was what I started on. Things proved slow though, and after an hour, I was back on old faithful elips!

This proved a good switch though, as fish number one was hooked, and landed, and it was a decent one for early season, 7lb 1oz, which I was more than happy with. A quiet spell saw me switch back to boilie on the downstream rod, and straightaway, a bite, which I thought was a chub at first, and quite a dogged scrap led to another barbel, this one going 8lb 4oz. Amazing. Last year it was August before I has an '8'!

8lb 4oz

Shortly afterwards, another fish on the pellet rod, led to another decent fish, this one 7lb 5oz. Three good barbel, so early in the season, unusual, and one happy angler.

Sadly, the afternoon proved to be rock hard, not a bite, but I walked back to the car chuffed to bits, fantastic stuff!

I'll be looking to tweak my boilie fishing, I'm making them myself, following recipes from well known bait gurus, I'll be trying lots of different things I think, although I'm sure pellet will still play a part, and meat too.

Watch this space.


Watch the video to this session here:-