#3. A change in season...

With summer drifting further into the past and the autumnal feeling in the air, I was at a bit of a loss as to where to venture out this week. The weather forecast wasn't the greatest, wind and rain forecast on the south coast. A drop in temperature to.  My local Hampshire Avon where I normally fish is also very weedy still, there are signs of it starting to turn brown and it's slowly beginning to break up so it won't be long. Weighing it up I felt my best chance of catching was probably another overnight trip up to the River Trent.

A weedy Avon

The drive up again was blighted by stupid traffic yet again on the dreadful M25. It's still amazing me how 4 lanes can be so clogged on a weekend in the mid afternoon. I think next time I will take the A34 and A43 to join the M1. I don't know why they bother having speed cameras on the M25 as u never move fast enough to even consider speeding lol 😡😤

I arrived at the Trent around 8pm just as the last bit of daylight was turning into night. To my surprise after the recent rain across the Midlands, the Trent was painfully low 😦. There was barely any flow what so ever which did dent my confidence a bit. My mate was already set up and fishing. Turned out before I arrived he had already had a barbel run but lost the fish to a snap off on the jagged rocks on the river bed. This helped fill me with some confidence we may be able to temp out a fish or two.

I was using my normal Trent barbel set up, tripod with two rods on cage feeders and long rigs. 15 mm boilies as hook baits but this time I had pre soaked them in a krill flavoured glug. My god did the glug smell but the barbel love it apparently lol 😷😷

Pungent 😷

After about 20 mins I had a run, the isotope was moving all over the place like a sparkler! Feeling confident I lifted into it and soon realised it wasn't a barbel. After a short scrap the fish was in the net, a chub around 3lb. It was a stocky fish with lovely summer brassy colours to it. I quickly put it back and re cast the bait. This was shortly followed by a couple of bream. The Trent bream in this section are actually quite a good stamp. Annoying when barbel fishing but with an average size of 7lb ish there not to shabby ☺️

Shortly after this I had a good run on my downstream rod. Lifting into this take it was clearly a big barbel. It was solid and stripping line at will with big, powerful lunges. I managed to get the fish under control and was playing it well. Sadly, shortly after gaining this control it took me down into the rocky bottom and snapped me off. I lost the entire rig and just got back some line which the first meter off was completely frayed 😔. This was to be the last barbel action of the evening as all the remaining runs were bream. 

I slept in the car and woke early to get a clear run back down south. Nearer home I decided to have a few hours on a local pit for bream. I'd not fished this pit for a while, so was intrigued to try it and this proved to be a a good call as the rain descended so it was quite nice to get under the brolly and watch the bobbins. I fished for around five hours and managed a couple of bream weighing 9lb 2oz and 9lb 4oz 😃🎣

A moody Bream 

On the way home from the lake I decided I would stop at Hampshire Avon and check in on how the level and weed was looking. It was still quite high and weedy but I found a large gap in the weed and still had the barbel gear in the car. The light was fading into darkness but I had some small boilies in the car still and fancied a quick go for an hour or two. I cast one out into the gap in the weed and sat back watching the isotope. After about 10 mins the tip began indicating a bite which I lifted into and connected to a fish. It wasn't a barbel and I was thinking a small chub. As the fish moved into netting range I turned on my head torch and the light illuminated a gorgeous roach slipping into the net. I was surprised it took a mini boilie but then I remembered when my good mate Ryan Hayden had a roach haul on the Thames using them. 

I popped the roach on the scales and it went 1lb 13oz, I fired off a few self takes which sadly came out badly. The focus was messed up. Thinking it was a fluke I returned the roach and re cast looking for barbel. Slightly later I had another similar bite which turned out to be a second roach 😃 which looked a little plumper. This one was an honest 1lb 15oz. This pic turned out much better thankfully. 

Almost 2lbs of river perfection 😃

It was soon time to call it a day. I'm a purest so I'm not sure I'm happy catching them on boilies but it's possibly something I need to think about on my acolyte and lighter gear. As you know, big river roach really are my favourite fish so it's always nice to get amongst them. We're see how things pan out but it's certainly opened my eyes to other ways of tempting the most beautiful fish the river has to offer 👍🏻🎣