Barbel Blanking 13th Sept 09

This week finally saw me out with the barbel rods to the same spot I fished a few weeks back.
I was working all day but managed to get out half hour early, so it was home, grab a bite to eat and the rods and out.
My original plan was to fish and area I have not done much barbel fishing before, but due to romours of a big fish being lost doing the rounds on the internet forums, it was packed there with all the decent pegs gone.
I decided to drive to a spot a little closer to home, and an area that I have caught from in the past.

I arrived to find the swim empty, in fact the whole stretch was empty, which was a little strange to say the least as there are normally at least one or two anglers there.

I set up 2 rods, identically, with 10lb mainline, 8lb hooklinks,korda flying backlead and size 10 hooks with a 1inch hair rig and 2oz gripper leads. Bait wise I stuck to tried and tested, glugged source 15mm and Prawn & shellfish 15mm on the other. The close in rod was the prawn bait and was followed by around 30 freebies, and 50 8mm trout pellets. The source rod was attached to a PVA bag of mixed halibuts soaked in source liquid andcast just past mid river.

I decided that as I have faith in these baits and methods, I would cast them out and leave them there for the remainder of the session, knowing how hard the river has been this year I didnt want to risk spooking ay fish that may have been in the area.

Well I would love to say that I bagged up, but I didnt, the wind was pretty bad bouncing the rod tips all over the place so I couldnt see any indications on them, I had to rely on the alarms to alert me, but they remained motionless!!

There was a distinct lack of fish topping last night, normally the river comes alive at dusk with fish rolling all over, but I saw 2 small fish top when I first arrived then nothing for the rest of the evening.

I think on my next session I am going to spend time leading around to find any features.
I normally just presume that the middle of the river is gravel and just chuck the rig out, but as last night proved when I reeled in to find my bait gone and my hook attached to a swan mussel, it shouldnt be a chuck and chance it approach.
So Im going to search out some fishable features to see if it improves my catch reports at all.