Having lived in the west half of the country for a number of years now, I have been fortunate enough to be able to fish the rivers Severn and Teme for barbel quite frequently. Though not exactly an expert, I do consider myself to be a competent barbel angler.
So when my brother Chris came to stay, who is a dedicated and experienced pike man but at 43 still a barbel virgin, I decided to try and get him his first whiskers. 
Chris still lives in the south east of England where barbel are not exactly prolific, so we set out to try and give him the experience of their awesome power to weight ratio. I’m sure he didn’t totally believe me when I described the rod wrenching bites and warned him not to take his eyes of his rod if he wanted to keep it out of the water.
Unfortunately the recent heavy rainfall made the conditions far from ideal for a novice. We drove first to the Severn, but decided that at 10 plus feet above normal it wasn’t an ideal starting point. So we carried on to the Teme. This proved to be much more fishable, just three to four feet of extra water!
We found a couple of adjacent fishable swims with good creases. We fished two rods each, one on a feeder and one with a big lump of meat.
After an hour or so, Chris came up behind me.
“Got anything yet?” he asked.
“No not a touch” replied I. “You?”
“I’ve just got this on the feeder. Is it a grayling? I haven’t seen one in the flesh,” said he holding out a pristine silver grayling of around a pound. His first ever.
“Jammy bugger” I replied. “I have fished this river for four years and not caught one of them.”
An hour or so later, he appears behind me again.
“No bites yet bruv?” he enquires.
“No, it’s really quiet.” I reply without turning round. “I’m surprised really with this falling flood. They should be having it. You having any knocks?”
“Actually, I’ve just landed this,” he says. “I got bored with grayling and decided to catch a barbel. You were right, they fight like stink.”
I turned round and there in his net is a very decent barbel. Jammy bugger was not the expletive this time! Two fish and two new species to my zilch on my home patch. Not a scenario I am going to live down for a while I think.
Pulling the scales round to 7lb 14oz it was not a bad first barbel at all. Always was lucky, that brother of mine – jammy bugger.
