Another Breaded Barbel!

Thursday 29th December

I had a whole day to fish today and with the weather still being mild i decided to work a couple of familiar stretches of the Trent in the hope of banking a nice Chub or two. It was very windy upon my arrival and although the sun was trying to poke through the clouds there was a fine rain in the air which made for a very vivid rainbow, i just hoped there was a big golden Chub at the end of it .
I soon settled in a sheltered spot and put the brolly up to keep the rain off a bit . There was quite a bit of flow in the middle but there was a nice marginal spot to my right with some reeds which looked chubby and this was where i decided to concentrate some bait. After a while of total inactivity the sky cleared and the sun came out proper . My impatience started to kick in and i was thinking about a move, id been there an hour without so much as a twitch .
I packed my bait and bits back into my bag and was just about to reel in when the tip juddered slightly, pulled around about 2inches and held there . It could almost have been weed catching on the line but i struck anyway and immediately found myself having to backwind as a powerful fish made its way downstream.
I was getting an uncanny sense of deja-vu after the events of boxing day and sure enough, after some hair raising moments when the fish got out into the main flow, i soon had a nice looking Barbel sitting in the landing net . It was a real solid fish and took the needle on the scales around to 9lb2oz .

Another cold water Barbel to the bread, im starting to think there might be something in this ......

After that i decided to move anyway and after a couple of hours of not much happening other than catching a couple of skimmers, i was finally beaten by the weather . The wind really picked up and the rain came back with a vengeance making for some pretty uncomfortable fishing so i headed back to the car and home.