Trent Carbelling - The long walk

It was Friday evening, my favourite time of the week and i had arranged an evening trip to the Trent with Keith. The area we had chosen was one id not fished for a few years due to the club losing access and it being one hell of a walk. With the distance involved it was decided between us that we should take my carp barrow and take turns pushing it. The weather was overcast but hideously humid and the sweat was pouring of us as we manhandled the barrow throught the undergrowth. It was bloody hard work but ten times better than carrying the gear on our backs  and we were setting up in our chosen swims in next to no time.
Nobody had been up there for ages and we both had to beat a swim out to get near the river. The flow in front of me was very powerful and i found that i needed 6oz to hold bottom only a third of the way across. It was a bit better along the margin and 3oz was more than adequate. After casting in and baiting up it wasnt long before i began to get a few indications as the downstream rod tip began to show up the odd chubby tap. The river appeared to be rising a little and there was quite a bit of flotsam coming down which kept snagging my line on the upstreamer and moving the lead out of position.
Despite the knocks, no proper pulls ensued and the evening was fast becoming night-time. A couple of Bream and a Carp head and shouldered over the downstream rod and i was confident of a bite at any minute. Suddenly the upstream rod buckled over and i found myself connected to an angry Barbel. It made full use of the heavy flow and had me thinking it was bigger than it actually was but on the bank it went 9lb exactly, a fine start!

A pristine 9lber

Shortly after returning that fish i heard a whistle from upstream and went up to find Keith doing battle with a lovely Barbel which turned out to be 10lb9oz, his first Trent double of the season. I headed back to my swim but nothing more was forthcoming and it wasnt long before Keith whistled once again. I got there just in time to net a nice Trent Common of 14.8, the man was on fire!

Keiths Carp

He went on to lose a fish to a hookpull  just prior to packing up which was a slightly disappointing end to a pretty successful evening for us, it was certainly worth the walk and i saw more than enough to make me head back up there again sometime soon!