The Trent Barbel Fish-in 2007(Not a completely factual account, just in case you were wondering)THE RIVER WAS still in flood as Martin Womble and I arrived and the rain that we had fallen the day before had still yet to fully enter the system. The outlook was not at all rosy…not rosy at all.
The first person I spotted was Matt Brown who was fishing in peg 3 which in reality due to the high water levels was peg 1 and above Matt was Dan ‘Critter’ on peg 1a . Matt had only just arrived but Dan had already done a night and had a couple of fish under his belt, including a carp of double figures. As soon as I set my stall out I decided to have a walk down the length we were fishing. Dicky Fisk and his mate Jim had set up camp in pegs 30 ish. Dicky was still asleep but his mate Jim had enjoyed some success landing a bream, a chub and a barbel. We discussed tactics and both agreed that the inside line just beyond the rocks would be best. Walking further on down and into the 40’s (The pegs I fancied had there not been a match posted for Sunday morning, pegs 40-60) I came across Sash who was fishing in a complete quagmire but one that was full of fish. He had landed eight barbel and a carp when I met him and by the time I left, he had made that nine! He was also fishing the inside line but was fishing cute and clever with smaller baits on long fluorocarbon hooklengths and size 12 hooks doing the damage.
Moving further down the stretch and into the 60’s were Eric and Lee, each of whom had just caught fish prior to my arrival. Lee was fishing one of my favourite pegs and was quite rightly confident of filling his boots! The river here in the 60’s has a fair amount of flow and curves into the angler, creating a very strong crease feature and the river bed here is also perfect being a huge bed of gravel that comes right up under his feet with little in the way of snags and to make things really great most of the floating debris should be reduced as the stuff should get carried on the other side of the crease. All in all a perfect flood swim in my humble opinion. Then another dozen or so pegs further down was ‘Billy no mates’ Sean Meeghan. Now this was taking the end peg advantage too far! Although I can see why he fished this peg for later in the day a 13lb 10oz fish was landed from here. Unfortunately Sean got bored of waiting for it and moved up towards Eric and Lee. Well, that’s fishing for ya! Dead fish Walking back up towards the top pegs it was disturbing to see the number of dead fish that were laying in the grass, the biggest being a carp of maybe 6lb but the most being a cluster of 50 or so eels along with chub and perch that had been caught in a shallow ditch when the waters receded, a very sad sight indeed. Why had the eels not slithered out and gone looking for the river. Is this proof that eels actually do not cross land?
Back in my peg the rods went out, each one utilizing a 6oz feeder crammed with Teme Severn mini mix and crushed lamprey boilies. I wanted to create a scent trail and leave a fair amount of bait out there for the fish to home in on. Casting was done every 10-20 minutes or so just to keep the swim topped up. We never sleep – ‘carp anglers we are not!’ Yeah, right! I relaxed between casts on my new bedchair, a purchase that I should have made years ago instead of trying to sleep sat up. But what the hell would a barbel angler need with one I hear you say, when everybody knows that we never sleep. Oh no, we never sleep. Carp anglers we are not ;O) ! Yeah right! Some might not but I love a kip on the bank after a few cans with my alarms set on full blast! Only joking there! I only ever set my alarms at three quarters! Adam Roberts, Chavender and Phillip ‘Pip’ McGuire arrived early afternoon and settled for pegs at opposite ends of what I would call the ‘top run’. Adam choosing to get between Dan and Matt on peg 1(ish) and Chavender and Pip going down to about peg 20-25.
The overall turnout for this fish-in was, as I expected, pretty low, the weather and flood levels putting some anglers off. Yet all the same I did miss the likes of Jim Hinchley and his pep calls telling me to chuck more at them. Bryan Baron for whom I had some papers, and Ron Clay for whom I had a batch of Antelope biltong, eight inches of cooked Boerwurst and a six pack of castle lager. Oh well, I shall have to eat it myself! Sorry Ron! DB and Jeff are up the weekend after and so another long trip so soon beforehand would have been out of the question. You were all missed lads! Anyways, back on track… but a Saxo appears and Jesus, it’s Field Marshall Clay! The right hand rod bangs over and I am into fish number 1 (Don’t worry this won’t get monotonous as I only caught 5 fish in total!), a nice school fish of 4 or 5lb, the extra weight of the lead giving a false impression of size and power. Exhausted after the fight I decide that now is a good time to stop for a snack and a drink, well you cannot let good biltong go to waste and the Castle lager would soon be getting warm! Lounging back on my bedchair I settled down with some of the better things that have reached here from Africa!
No sooner had I finished the first strip of Biltong and the accompanying lager than I heard the unmistakable clatter of a Citroen Saxo. Jesus Christ, that’s not Ron is it, I thought to myself. It was 300 or more yards away, bouncing along at full speed atop the flood bank. Good old Ron, he wouldn’t miss a nice bit of Biltong! The Saxo’s engine was billowing out blue smoke and then the auxiliary turbo system engaged and two rather thin legs dropped from beneath the bonnet and began to pound away at the dusty track. Some twenty minutes later the Citroen pulled up besides my bivvy, the window wound down with a screech that sounded like a copulating Hyena on its very last vinegar stroke. “Ron, whatever is the matter man?! I thought you were going to wreck your precious Rosie driving down here like that!”
“That’s Field Marshal Clay of the 45th Natal Native Air Rifles contingent if you don’t mind! And there is no time for caution now. The natives have risen and taken the bait stores at Dunham Bridge. It’s a complete massacre, two thousand kilo of good pellets and boilies gone in no time!” “Dunham you say?” I had my bait stored at Dunham I thought to myself. Don’t cry Lee, don’t cry in front of the men, I said to myself. But it was such good bait. My throat closed tighter than a mallards hoo-hoo in winter but I did not cry in front of the men. “Aye, Dunham! What’s the matter with you man, have you got wax in your ears? They routed Dunham and they are no more than an hour behind me as we speak!” “But, what of the boilies and the stick mix?” I enquire. “Gone I’m afraid, all gone!” Ron waived his hand before him like an umpire signalling a four. “All Washed away.” “Who are they?” Asked Clay, pointing at the two middle-aged hippies dressed in woolly jumpers and grey dungarees. “RSPB missionaries out to convert the anglers. That’s their outpost over there. The one with the toilet and bird hide.” “Well, get them out of here. This is not going to be a place for their tender hearts! This is your fish-in Lee, so take command!” Field Marshal Clay pulled out his weapon and looked me in the eye. “As of now you are the commanding officer in charge of this merry lot.”
By now all of my fellow anglers had gathered round, mostly out of curiosity and an urge to get a closer look at the car that had hurtled past them at 1.3 miles per hour and woken them up from their mid afternoon siesta. After taking command of my troops I began the task of trying to explain the situation to the missionaries. They decided that they would stay and try to bring reason to this madness. I had to decline their offer and lock them in their porta-loo. Soon a nine foot redoubt had been constructed from bedchairs, trolleys and assorted buckets and bags of pellets. The clock had not stopped and no sooner had we finished our outer perimeter the first of the forward scouts were spotted. The rats stood in rank, beating their mole shin shields with their long whip like tails and stamping their feet they began to sing/squeak in unison, the noise rising to deafening proportions, threatening to shatter the very nerve of the defending anglers like an opera singer would shatter a glass. “What do you think?” I look over to Matt Brown. “Fantastic upper sections but they don’t have any bass or baritone like!” “A song man. We need a song!” I yelled to him “We can do better than that. Are we going to stand here silent? Sing man, sing!” Matt’s eyes focused for a moment, then closed in deep concentration as he summoned up the greatest performance of his life. “Mmmmm men of Harlech stop your dreaming, can’t you see their spear points gleaming! See their warrior pennants streaming, to this battlefi…”
“Whoa there big boy! Give us something with a bit of Wang in it mate! Like Hi ho Sheffield Wednesday!” “I don’t know that one!” Matt replied. “Just sing then!” These Donny lot have a poor repertoire of battle songs! But before matt could embark on his rousing recital a column of huge rats sprang out of the nettles and the balsam and began to run at the redoubt wall. Colour Sergeant Martin Womble walked the ranks calming the men and at the same time instilling a sense of duty to all, he stopped besides a nervous looking young angler. “Mark your target Fisk and do up your tunic! There’s a good gentleman!” He continued his walk. “Mark your target, fire at 10 metres. Mark your target. Fire at ten metres.” Long yellow teeth, now clearly visible The rats closed in, closer and closer they came, their long yellow teeth now clearly visible as they prepared to vault the final 10 meters and massacre the defending garrison. “Front rank fire!” I bellowed. A volley of air dried boilies issued forth, decimating the oncoming rats. “Second rank fire!” Another hail of deadly accurate high protein bait did even more damage. “Third rank Fire!” But still the rats came ever onwards. “First rank fire! Second rank fire!” And so it went for several more volleys until the air itself was filled with boilie crumb and the acrid burning stench of Lamprey and Corn steeping liquor tore at the back of the throat of every man there. “We have them I tell you, we have them! Sixty I tell you we must have got sixty!” I exclaimed in a voice filled with pride. “They were just testing your fire power. They will be back within the hour!” Barked Clay as his Marlborough cigarette caught in his throat and caused him to splutter. A small contingent of rats had managed to outflank the Doncaster catapult regiment and had broken through the right flank; they were now busy chewing their way through the roof of a two man bivvy which was being used as a field kitchen. The Coleman stove that was being used to boil the soup was tipped over and in no time had ignited the nylon material. Adam Roberts was the first to react and drew out his storm pole and battered the first of these rats to death before he was overcome by the second and third. His assailant’s advantage was brief however as his quick thinking comrades fired off several rounds of Sigma Elips pellets, killing both rats instantly. Again the rats came and again they were beaten down by the accuracy and fire power of the anglers, the rats no match for the sheer destructive power of a good fishmeal boilie in the 32 mm calibre. By the end of the day the fields and river ran red with the blood of 4000 rats, their broken bodies scattered everywhere the eye could see. “We’ve done it. They’re beaten by Jove. Beaten I tell you!” I exclaimed in exhausted jubilation, a smile a wide as a Rotherham girls backside spread across my face. Not that anyone would want a Rotherham girls backside spread across their face. But just as the wave of relief spread through the ranks it was followed by sheer terror. The type of terror that fills you when you find out that the girl you met last week used to be called Kevin!
The entire flood bank horizon was silhouetted with rats. Hundreds upon hundreds of large black rats danced the conga across the rise of the bank, all squeaking in unison, the noise almost unbearable. “Come on then! Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!” I yelled. I ran forward at them, brandishing my extra long bankstick and almost fell flat on my face, tripping up on the four empty Castle lager cans and my snap bag that had held that extra tasty biltong and Boerwurst. Dazed for a second I soon realized that it was only the Fox Micron that was squeaking and I had better stop the barbel before it reached Gainsborough! A double, but roll on October The rest of the day passed with most of the anglers catching a few fish. Critter on peg 1a had a nice carp and a barbel before the level started to really fly up and draw a close to the sport. Pip McGuire had the biggest barbel out at 10lb 13oz a very good fish indeed from a river well out of sorts and struggling with levels that were up and down like a trollop’s knickers! Anyway it was decided that we should hold another one in October when summer should finally have arrived so hopefully I will see you all again soon! More images from the fish-in |
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