6th August River Wye in summer at last!

Well it was time to get back on the river again, this time with a friend John. I know he was really looking forward to the trip. However I got the call from him on Sunday morning to say that he had done his back in……Where……..in the pub. Now this is the second time this has happened. I remember a couple of years back he was getting out of the car at the Red Lion pub car park at Lacock on the Bristol Avon and his back went. He just stood against the car in agony, however we slowly got him back into the car and back home again. Treffor West was there watching and I said to him that’s the shortest fishing trip ever for me.

So I tried to get others to accompany me to the Wye, but everyone was either busy with work or fishing themselves…….so Kenny no mates for me!

So I was on the road at 5am and arrived to find the river another 3ft down since my last trip. I had expected this and therefore wanted to fish in the wooded stretch where I hadn’t fished this year.

The swim I wanted to fish looked perfect a couple of trees in the water either side of me and a great smooth glide about a third of the way across the river. Things were looking good. My setup was 12lb line a large 90g Korum cage open-end feeder. The pellets were 10mm halibut.

Within the first hour I had caught one chub of about 2lbs but had lost 4 swim feeders. That’s almost £10 worth. There wasn’t any real snag but just rocks and boulders. I decided to move back to the meadow for a while whilst I still had some feeders left. I settled in one swim and caught an eel of about 2lbs straight away followed by a barbel of just over 6lbs. Then I had another of similar size  after another hour.

So after the loss of feeders and a bit of confidence returning I ventured back down into the woods again and settled into another swim where the river narrowed and pushed through at a fair speed. This time I had action from the off, in 90 minutes I caught 4 chub to just over 4lbs and 3 barbel to 6lbs 10oz and lost a real big fish to a hook pull.

Things did go quite for an hour when along came another barbel of just under 6lbs. During all of this the weather closed in and a thunder storm went over just north of where I was fishing. Sure enough as the afternoon wore on the river started to rise a little. I was still losing feeders and hooklinks to the rock and boulders too frequently for comfort. So with just two feeders left I ventured off to the meadow again. One more barbel came along after a while then I lost the two remaining feeders by 7.30pm.

That’s £22 worth of feeders gone and lost. As Boldric says in Black Adder, ” I have a cunning plan, wait until the tide goes out on the Wye and retrieve the lost feeders”. Now you normally lose several feeders each trip but 10 that’s beyond a joke.

So the end result was 7 barbel and 5 chub.

No large fish caught by me but a 9lber came out and a couple of 8lbers to other anglers so they are still feeding well. These came out during the evening so if I had stayed I might just have caught a larger barbel.