The river looked good again and Stu (Skive) copped for another double at 10lb 4oz. I managed one of 8lb 10oz, and a lad we knew on the stretch had a 9.12. Plus we had one or two smaller fish. But it could have been a lot better had most of them stayed hooked. Dave had two come unstuck, Skive lost two for the same reason, and I lost one when it threw the hook. The strange thing was that this wasn’t happening due to striking at ‘hacksaw’ bites, or any other type of feeble bite. No, the rods were bending over like good ‘uns and to all intents and purposes the barbel were hooking themselves. But either straight away or some time into the fight the hooks were losing their hold. Now, if I’d been on my own I would have been looking to change my hook pattern, hook size or hair length. Anything to try to rectify the problem. But this was happening to four of us and between us we were using different hair lengths, hook types and hook sizes. Two of us were on boilies and two on pellets. So it was obviously the way the barbel were picking the bait up rather than it being anything to do with the tackle or bait.
The only thing any different to the previous sessions when we had few or no hook pulls was that it rained heavily and continually and the temperature, both air and water, was falling. Interesting though, and more food for thought regarding barbel bites. |
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