A Reward for Madness

Fish-on... All the motivation you should need to beat the elements this winter!

With a day’s fishing firmly penciled in on the calendar for Sunday 9^th, I had been eagerly watching Met Office forecasts and levels for each of the Rivers Severn, Teme and Wye. I had no particular preference and with heavy rain forecast in the week ahead it would clearly come down to conditions on the day. By Sunday morning the Wye was ready to burst its banks and the Teme resembled a raging torrent, leaving only the Severn as a viable option. A previous floodwater session had seen me on the bank at Winterdyne with levels of 2.1m, a figure I now use as a benchmark for the river licking the towpath. A morning check showed the river to be above this at 2.3m, from a resting level of 0.5m barely a week before. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t considered cancelling, but was reluctant to lose a day on the bank at such a busy time of year. ‘Fortune favours the brave’ I thought… and leapt out of bed to forage in the cold for tea.

Musing my options over an early morning brew, I eventually decided on the BAA stretch at Northwood. The first swim above the old railway stanchions has been kind to me in the past, especially in floodwater conditions and the venue was close enough to home to abort if the river conditions turned out to be either too dangerous or impossible to fish.

Ready for all eventualities - and a long walk!

Arriving for 8 am, I was pleased to find no other anglers in the car park and the river not in the field! I decided to use a trolley for the couple of hundred metre walk down to the river and despite momentarily stranding myself in a shallow flooded section of field, soon enough arrived at my peg. The river had entirely engulfed the existing peg and was now level with the approaching bank. The base of the peg from which anglers would usually fish would provide a clear platform on which I would present a bed of bait. Ten minutes casting about with just a lead was time well spent to get a locate the embankment and get a sense of the peg. To my surprise the sheltered water extended to some 30 yards from the bank on account of a large fallen tree above the next peg along. Being able to hold bottom on the edge of this flow with a 4oz weight was a big confidence boost and would allow me to fish a second rod and therefore experiment more widely with bait options.

Smelly baits - don't be shy in floodwater

I’ve always found simple approaches best in cold floodwater conditions, when water colour and flow rules out delicate visible baits such as maggots. Rather I prefer highly-scented baits, with a preference for boilies over pellets in winter. That said, barbel see so may pellets all year round, I always include them in my loose feed together with hemp to keep the fish grubbing around.

With plenty of visible snags and even more beneath the surface, my tackle choice would need to take no prisoners. Selecting rods with powerful blanks would allow me to bully fish away from snags if needed. Mainline and hooklength were stepped up, with high abrasion resistance and frayed tensile strength critical. Daiwa sensor is my go-to line for these occasions and I have absolute confidence in it. Short 3ft leaders would reduce snagging, and Size 8 and 10 Drennan Specialist hooks would be matched to larger and smaller baits respectively. Finally, trimmed down anti-eject sleeves would increase the potential for hook-ups. I would experiment with smaller change baits down the edge and fish a paste-wrapped 21mm krill boilie out in front.

The first hour would see me casting out regularly to build confidence that areas were snag-free, feeding loose offerings with each cast. Shortly after 10, I mistakenly over-cast the outward rod and watched it bounce round beyond the edge of a near bank tree. I entirely expected it to be snagged, but nevertheless set the baitrunner to allow me to take some photographs of the morning sun bathing the river stanchions in a beautiful pale yellow light.

Any moment... 

The decision to leave that rod in proved decisive, with the rod hooping over shortly afterwards. Lifting into the fish, I felt a heavy resistance but there was no characteristic run to indicate a barbel. Expecting a chub to dive into the bankside snags I put a deep bend in the rod with the only response being the spinning of the tightly set clutch. For those first minutes the fish appeared content to slowly plod around the depths, undisturbed by my attempts to intervene. Marking a sudden change in proceedings, the fish made a bee-line for the flow and on finding it turned with the current and bolted downstream. By the time the clutch finished screaming the fish was well downstream of the stanchions. Fortunately the fish was also mid-river and clear of the sharp-edged stone columns. stayed so until after it was back upstream of the sharp edged stone columns. Applying consistent pressure to gradually make ground on the fish, I managed to bring it back upstream and shortly after get the fish under the rod tip. However, the fish was still sat deep amongst an array of bankside snags and despite applying far more pressure than I usually would at this point in proceedings, the fish still felt firmly in control of our tussle.

Eventually, the fish relented to the pressure and came up towards the surface. The moment the lead became visible the fish kited upstream and across a shallow sunken branch. Everything went solid. I kept the pressure on for a moment… Nothing. I held firm, feeling for any feedback that fish was still present… Nothing. My heart sank. The amount of pressure the fish could withstand even in the slack water indicated the fish was better-than-average. I slackened everything off... Sometimes in doing so, the fish will swim itself free of the snag by pulling in the opposite direction… Nothing. Despondent, I moved as far in the opposite direction as the floodwater would allow and with one last gambit leaned hard into the snag. With the rod bent double, I was waiting for the inevitable ‘ping’ of hooklength separating from mainline. With everything suddenly giving, the rod swept bank and I almost fell up the bank. Expecting to have broken the hooklength, I was both surprised and astonished when the rod tugged savagely back towards the river and the barbel, still connected, made one last thunderous run for freedom. Loosening the clutch as little as I dared, I let the fish steam out and then gradually played it back, quickly slipping the net under the fish at the first opportunity.

As she slipped into the net, she looked a good eight or perhaps a nine but it was only as the fish rolled onto her side in the net that I got a true impression of the fishes size. The fish was nearly 6” deep and extremely broad across the belly. A sharp-eyed few of you will have noticed my blog target to catch a 10lb barbel, less still will know that since I began fishing rivers all those years ago, I’ve never managed to catch a double figure barbel. Along the way there have been a handful of fish that I thought might tip the scales, only to fall short. In the end, it was a fish that I had absolutely no doubt in that broke that revered threshold. After a brief rest in the net, I transferred her to a sling and with the scales zeroed, atched the dial spin and settle on 10lb 10oz. I'd finally done it! With the banks muddy and slippy, I set up a go-pro on the bank to capture some footage of the fish before returning her to the river from whence she came and sat back to absorb the moment, grinning from ear to ear.

10'10 - My first double-figure barbel!

Winter-form - look at that belly!

It was some ten minutes before I could bring myself to cast my rods back in. The rest of the day was entirely unproductive despite trying smaller baits and five different swims later in the afternoon. It didn’t matter one bit though, I’d had my reward for the madness of being out on the bank in such conditions and fortune certainly does seem to favour the brave.