Every Picture Tells A Story
SIZE DOESN’T ALWAYS MATTER
I bet we’ve all caught hundreds of five pound barbel in our time but I tell you something, not one that has graced my landing net has given me quite as much pleasure as this little beauty did on Thursday evening.
It had been a bad day and I needed to get down to the river for a couple of hours.
So armed with just a few bits and bobs I set off on the fifteen minute run down to the Severn near Welshpool.
The rains had arrived a couple of days before and the river was running about eighteen inches above its painfully low summer level and it had that wonderful tinge of brown which I hoped meant the tiny barbel population would take full advantage of and be actively foraging around for food.
As usual there was no one else there and I cast out under the tree as the clock struck seven.
I had a Dynamite pellet attached to the hair via a tiny bait band together with a cage feeder and the remnants of some groundbait that I grabbed from the freezer in my haste to get out of the house.
Sat there under the canopy of the big willow looking across at the wondrous hills that make this such a joyous place to be I was alone in deep thoughts from the days events.
Now I’d normally say something like out of the blue the rod slammed over, the reel screamed and I found myself attached to a hard fighting barbel but that wasn’t quite what happened!
It must have been around nine o’ clock when the phone rang, it had been the sort of day when it seemed a phone had been permanently attached to my ear , I found myself engrossed in conversation.
Looking down at the rod, I was perched above my normal staion as it was below the waterline with the extra height, I noticed the line was no longer pointing downstream and had almost completed a 180 degree turn!
Now I may be a little slow at times but I knew what was happening here.
A fish was on and swimming slowly upstream, I tightened up and it was barbel on.
The phone had been despatched by now with the standard sign off of I’m in!
And so it was that my Welshpool barbel finally ended up in the landing net and I really didn’t care what size it turned out to be.
Back in the car my confidence had now been truly unearthed, not that I was ever in doubt but it makes one heck of a difference when the fish eventually arrives.
The elation I felt was as great as the first time my reel screamed at Adam’s Mill, the barbel here are every bit as cagey as those although the size may not compare…………..as yet!
There are much bigger barbel to be caught here and it really is just a matter of time, confidence is key and mine is running a lot higher now!
STEVE
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