Summertime, and the Living is Easy

I'm making a blog entry just for the sake of it really this time. A month since my last entry and summer has kicked in big style. I don't fish much in the summer as I've said before so I'll roll a few reports up into one.

I managed another trip to Scotland in early July but I'm afraid I caught very little. It wasn't too surprising really as the weather was blisteringly hot and the surface temperature of the loch was 22 degrees. I had a few half-hearted takes from small pike on topwaters fished in the weeds but I only hooked three and landed just one, a seven pounder.

The only other fishing I've done is barbel fishing. There have been three trips in all, and I've been determined to fish new stretches rather than return to my old haunts. This didn't start well as i only managed a solitary eel on my first visit to the new stretch I had chosen but it gave me the opportunity to find out about the stretch and I laid plans for the next trip.

The next trip hit another snag. I turned up armed with all the tackle and bait only to find the swims I was interested in occupied by three anglers. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I didn't waste the day, but went instead to my favourite old stretch and had a good day, taking thirteen barbel and a chub. Sadly, none were of any great size with the biggest just going around seven pounds.

Trip number three was to be with my son, Joe and we made an early start at the new stretch to make sure we got the swims we wanted. We got them alright but i was soon wishing we hadn't as the spot I was in was terribly cramped with just a tiny ledge to sit on and a steep climb behind me.

I sat on that ledge for sixteen hours all though the heat of the day and got quite badly burnt by the sun, as did Joe. The forecast was for cloud and rain but guess what, they got it wrong again. We didn't get many fish, just two barbel and a chub for me and one barbel and a chub for Joe. My biggest went exactly nine pounds while Joe's barbel was 9lbs 6oz and his chub 5lbs 4oz.

A slow day but good-sized fish. We're planning the next trip already!

Done Again

Working shifts as I do, I get to fish midweek most of the time. That's great, since it means I can avoid the crowds and usually get the swim I want. Every few weeks however, my rota works around so I have my time off at weekends and so it was last time out. The tench pit is far too busy for me to bother with at weekends and so I decided to have a day or two on the river fishing for barbel.

Another good thing about fishing weekends is that I get to go with my son Joe. Regular readers will recall the last time Joe and I fished together, at Blithfield, when he beat me soundly, catching more and bigger pike than I did. Well in an effort to prove that that was a one-off, I took him with me to show him how it's done - bad idea!

We'd had a fair bit of rain the previous day or two and the Ribble was up by a couple of feet with plenty of colour in it. Now those are good conditions generally but high water often brings a big problem with it - weed. The weed was fairly bad in fact and most of the anglers on the stretch had a poor time of it, many of them packing up early, but Joe and I chose swims where there is a bit of shelter from the current close in so we were able to hold out without having to reel in every five minutes and clear the line.

There were six anglers on the stretch and only one of them caught any barbel - but it wasn't me! I had to be satisfied with five chub, a bream and an eel. They all took mini-boilies glugged in a strong fish flavour and fished over a bed of hemp, birdseed and pellets. The chub were awful old tatty creatures with big heads and long thin bodies and while the biggest weighed little more than three pounds I'm sure they were much bigger in their younger days. The bream was a very odd creature. A male, it was heavily encrusted with tubercles all over its body, not just on its head. This too was around three pounds and it fought like no bream I've every had before, leaping clear of the water several times and giving its all.

So who caught the barbel? Well I'm sure you've guessed. First bite of the new season produced a rather nice barbel of 10lbs 11oz and he followed that up with a six-pounder. Methods and bait were the same but he was obviously in a better spot. I followed up that trip with a day out on my own on another stretch of the river and did catch a few barbel but nothing near that size.