“Well that’s a personal best I’m not likely to beat for a while!” said Adam Perkin as we watched the huge barbel swim away. Well it was actually going to take him less than 15 minutes! Let me tell you the story.
Adam has recently returned to fishing after a long lay-off and is rediscover
ing the joys of Yorkshire barbel fishing. He’d fished the river Nidd on 16th June with only a small barbel to show for it so he decided to grab a few hours after work on 17th June. He arrived at the river Swale, to find that I was fishing the swim he’d been intending to fish, so when I moved an hour or so later he decided to move in after me.
The evening was fairly uneventful until, at about 9.30, I heard a shout from Alan. I hurried down the bank to find him resting a large barbel in his landing net.
“It looks well over 8lb so I think it’s going to be a new personal best.”
Looking at the fish, I thought it really was well over 8lb and would probably be over 10lb. The scales revealed a weight of exactly 11lb which made it a new PB for Adam by a large margin! After Adam returned the fish I returned to my swim to fish out the last minutes of daylight, but it wasn’t long before I heard another shout from Adam.
This time he was still playing the fish when I arrived and I held the net for him. This fish looked bigger than the last one and I wasn’t surprised to see the scales go round to 11lb 8oz, giving Adam a superb, and probably unique, brace of Yorkshire 11lb barbel.
Coincidentally, the biggest fish was one that I caught at the same weight on the same day, 17th June, in 2006 and on that day I’d lost another large fish just before it. Makes you think doesn’t it?
