Thankfully these days I’m old enough that I no longer have to write the traditional ‘what I did on my school holiday’ essay when I go back to school next week. Mind you what with it being GCSE year and the start of the week kicking off with double maths I think I would rather write about fishing!
I started looking at FishingMagic a long time ago as Graham Marsden was a friend of my dad and Graham sent me through a FishingMagic cap which I have always loved.
The first time I wore it on a trip out with dad I landed a 12lb 12oz barbel from the River Severn and ever since it has been my ‘lucky hat’ and every time I wore it I seemed to catch – dad has started to ‘borrow’ it recently I note…
As dad doesn’t go fishing very much these days I tend to fish with mates on local commercials like Willow Park where it’s easy for him to drop me off but I do love river fishing when I get the chance and over the holidays mum took me up to the Warwickshire Avon at Harvington for a couple of days with the plan of us fishing one of the lakes there during the day then moving onto the river for the evening and into darkness.
Dad had caught a 12lb plus barbel from the Avon there on the only time he ever fished it for a feature in Angler’s Mail so I tapped him up for a bit of info on swims and bait before leaving.
On arriving it wasn’t particularly good news as some blokes who had been fishing the river all week for the barbel had caught very little but I made the most of the lake and had carp to 10lb 8oz on the lake fishing my pole and picked up some decent fish on the method feeder as well.
On the river the swim I chose was at the downstream end of the section and I had bulrushes either side of me with a deep channel mid-river with another stand of bulrushes and a bit of cover towards the far bank; it was steady rather than fast flowing and didn’t look that barbelly but to be honest apart from the section right below the weir the river was a bit slow.
Mum reckoned I should fish close in just in front of the bulrushes in front of the swim and that is what I did on the first evening – and never had a bite – cheers mum!
I don’t think I did anything too wrong the fish just weren’t there. I had set up a cage feeder and packed it with some groundbait I had blagged from dad – a 50:50 mix of Marukyu EFG 151 and Pallatrax barbel mix with some added hemp and crushed Dynamite Spicy Shrimp and Prawn boilies with a whittled down boilie on the hook ‘Welchy’ stylee.
On our second, and final, evening I ignored mum and did it my way and cast 2/3 of the way across the river and was soon proved right when a decent bite resulted in a 5lb 4oz barbel – that would do nicely!
I texted dad to let him know and when back on the same spot but the next bite wasn’t another barbel as I (and dad in his text) had been expecting but a chub. It tried to dive into the weed at my feet but I managed to steer it clear and get it out and into the net and it was a decent one.
Mum weighed it in for me at 4lb 2oz – my first ever chub over 4lb – so I was absolutely delighted and together with the barbel I had enjoyed a terrific evening – but the best was yet to come!
I struck my last bite of the evening at about 9pm (although it wasn’t really a bite – the rod tip was just sort of knocking) and at first thought it was a little chub or even a crayfish until I saw it in the light of my headtorch at the front of my swim: “Oh My God!!” I thought as the biggest roach I had ever seen flashed in front of me and I just hoped it wouldn’t fall off!
Thankfully it didn’t and after making sure it was safely netted and resting up in the deep water in front of the swim I rushed up to get mum – I was just a bit excited! The weight registered 2lb 4oz so a PB roach and PB chub in the same session!
Sadly we were going home the following morning so I didn’t have a chance to have another crack at the swim now that I seemed to have worked out how to fish it but the fish I had caught from it were really special.
I’m hoping to be able to beat my carp PB of 14lb 12oz over the next month or so – if I do I’ll write something else for the site and tell you how I did it.
