Rob Stone had been catching plenty of barbel from the river Wye but had not caught any from the Bristol Avon. His challenge was for me to show him a few barbel swims and hopefully a few feeding resulting in him breaking his duck.

We were soon making our way to the swim which I call the 5 minute swim. Out went a few pellets and his hooklink with a small PVA bag attached.
Within a few minutes the rod arched around and he was playing a barbel, which got snagged in mid river where there shouldn’t have been any snags at all.
Eventually everything came back other than the fish, so this one is a mystery.

We arrived at another swim. There were 4 barbel in the swim to about 8lbs feeding on the pellets I threw in. I showed him how to get them feeding in different parts of the swim. He couldn’t get enough of watching them feeding. It was soon time to cast out when they were out of the swim.

We sat there for 40 minutes without a barbel coming back into the swim, they must be very spooked.

We fished another swim where I saw a couple of barbel, however the only fish to pull his string was a 3lbs 14oz chub.

3lbs 14oz chub

We returned to the swim where we saw the barbel and sure enough they were there again. The same process was repeated this time though his string was pulled but not by a barbel but a small 4lb pike.

It's not a barbel

That was it, time to move on!

We arrived at another stretch and walked to an area where I knew a small shoal of barbel lived. Again the time it takes to get a take here can be measured in minutes. Sure enough there were a few fish there in between the cabbages. The trick here is to cast out then put some pellets in and soon the fish move up to feed.

Well just say that it took about 20 seconds for Rob to get the first bite. He played the fish through the cabbages and to the net. It didn’t disturb the swim too much which was a good sign of perhaps catching another. We quickly unhooked, weighed and took a photo of the fish. Returning the fish a little upstream would hopefully not disturb the swim.

4lb 4oz barbel

I’m sure Rob won’t mind me saying he is an ex pro footballer and ex 17stone rugby player. He makes the fish look quite small. His fingers were as big as my wrists. I need to say here that we got on really well.

Things got even better for Rob when we spotted more barbel feeding. Well this time it took 5 minutes to get a bite. I could see a larger fish munching the pellets and saw it turn on it’s side and bolt off after feeling the hook, and  a split second
later Rob’s rod was off and bending into the fish.

This one went 8lbs 2oz and Rob was well pleased.

8lbs 2oz barbel

So with it being 5pm we decided that the goals and objectives had been achieved and he couldn’t wait to tell his mate he wasn’t a Bristol Avon barbel virgin now.

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