It's raining.....hurrah!!!!

Well, finally, and it's been a very long wait this year, some rain has fallen, Friday morning saw lots of it, and although I knew it wouldn't have made much difference so early, I made the trip back down to the WA following an early finish from work. The plan was to fish my usual pellet approach, and also to debut my new Three Foot Twitch boilies that Richard Easom has sent me earlier in the week. 

Upon arrival, it was obvious the rain had made little difference, with maybe a couple of inches on it,

The river at dusk

but still no colour. This was as I expected though, and as the two previous trips to the river had produced, I was confident of a fish. I found a peg which looked deeper than those further upstream, which proved to be 10-11ft when I was baiting up, and those extra few inches of water provided a nice bit of flow, all good stuff. I put about three pints of hemp in, about twenty feet from the bank, and started the session with the upstream rod fishing a 12mm crab pellet hair rigged on a size 12 pallatrax hook, and the downstream with a 'dubby' boilie, rigged on a size 10. Both rods had straight 1.5oz leads. I settled back with a cup of tea, and awaited events.

A very wiry 6.1

As I knew it would be, it proved to be a slow start, and other anglers seemed to be suffering the same fate, but I stuck to my guns and waited. After a biteless 90 minutes, I had a wrap around on the boilie rod, and a fish was on, and what a great account of itself that this fish gave. Its first run saw line screaming off the reel, and even after I gained some line on it, it was off once more.

It also fought very deep, and I thought it was a good fish until it surfaced, when I realised it was an average sized fish. It was very long and wiry, and I've had fish of similar length that have gone 8 plus. Still it was a barbel, and proof that it's not necessarily the biggest fish that pull your string the most. On the scales, it came in at just 6.1, but my third successive trip that has produced for me, and a good start for the dubby!!!

That was only fish, despite fishing into darkness, none of the other anglers caught, so I must be doing something right!!!  Today, more rain has fallen, which means I'll be doing only one thing tomorrow afternoon, I'm already feeling confident about it!!!