Another year to remember - month by month look at the year.

Well that is another year coming to an end, but what a year.  This blog has come of age with the followers now at 100 and the total pageviews at over 66,000, it makes it all worth while to keep up the effort of the diary.

I am considering publishing a book which would be a record of this blog from its inception and your thoughts on the idea would be appreciated.  Initial figures suggest perhaps £10 for B&W and £25 for colour.

Recent weeks have proven very hard to get any consistant sport and most trips have in fact been a total blank, fortunately the year has a whole has been quite satisfactory so lets have a look at the highlights.


The 2012 year has been an exciting year with both highs and lows that I have shared with you through this blog.   Although I’ve only caught one new personal best of a species, I have increased the number of rivers where a double figure barbel has been caught as well as improving other river bests.  Improving a personal best is only one measure of success, and I was very pleased with getting my target fish in chub, and tench along with the barbel already mentioned.  The crowning feature of the year was almost the last when my crucian claim was accepted as an equal British record at 4lb-9oz.  No BRFC certificate yet, but I am advised that it will arrive early in January and once framed it will find a place on the wall.  So let us look at some of the highlights of my year, month by month.

January.

The month had started much as the previous year had ended floods with very cold snaps to interrupt consistent sport.  I had been fishing the River Anker for a couple of seasons, not often, but enough to have hoped for better results in that I had not caught a single barbel up to date.  This visit towards the end of the month put that right in the form of another different river double and a river record at the time of capture going 15lb-4oz.

                                                                   15lb-4oz Anker pb.

 February.

We sometimes have mild months at this time of year, but this was not one of them.  I struggled to catch fish at all, a few perch and an odd smaller chub was the reward for a fair bit of effort.  Then I decided to go south to the Hampshire Avon for a few days and I got my reward in the form of a 7lb 2oz monster chub along with other fish made smaller by comparison.

                                                        Magnificent Avon Chub

Although not a monster by today’s standards I was pleased to land a 20lb-12oz Common Carp from a canal on a match rod using gear suited to the silver bream I was trying to catch – the rod broke but I did land the fish.

                                                                Canal specimen

March.

Not a particularly successful month by my own standards, a chub of 6lb-1oz caught along with a 2lb-7oz perch off the Avon and a 3lb-7oz perch caught from a local commercial being the better fish landed.

                                                               Best of the season at 3lb-7oz 

April.

Always a chancy month and this one saw the start of the tench fishing produce fish to 6lb-3oz for me, and a 46lb-9oz catfish caught by Curtis from Orchid Lakes.

                                                          With a little help to hold it.

May.

This month saw me get a brace of catfish at 41lb and 34lb-4oz, but the highlight by a long way was a 10lb-5oz tench from a new water, this being the third different venue where I’ve taken a double figure specimen.

                                                                      A real gem. 

June.

A good month for me with a 12lb-4oz barbel off the Dove and a brace of tench off a local water at 9lb and 9lb-4oz amongst a 15 fish catch, the first time the venue had done such a brace.  This was topped off by a brace of roach from Lochnaw at 2lb-13oz each.

                                                                  12lb-4oz Dove double.

                                                        Best of the tench brace  9lb-4oz.

                                                          First of the brace of 2lb-13oz roach. 

 July.

Lots of barbel from different rivers with yet another different river double, this being the River Soar and an 11lb-1oz specimen.  Although I had caught barbel from both the Ribble and Goyt they fell short of that double figure target ensuring I still had plenty to go at.

                                                                    11lb-1oz Soar double

August.
This month started with a bang when a trip north to do a barbel talk gave me the chance to fish the River Swale and I was rewarded with yet another different river double at 12lb-2oz, bringing the total rivers to 23. 

                                                                       Swale monster. 

September.

A return trip to Lochnaw saw me improve the previous brace from the last trip by one ounce with a pair of roach at 2lb-14oz.  Lots of barbel for me though nothing spectacular, but Curtis upped his personal best to 10lb-15oz from the River Severn, his first ever double.

                                                                       He looks pleased.

                                               The second of the 2lb-14oz brace.

October.
Again lots of barbel off different rivers topped off by three 11lb fish, two off the Kennet and one from the Severn all within a four day spell.  Very pleased with the barbel but a new English pb put extra dimples in the cheeks when I landed a very hard fighting sturgeon of 75lb-5oz.

                                                                   It was this long!

November.

My third trip to the north for roach finally paid off with a Lochnaw 3lb specimen taken along with a 2lb-14oz backup fish.  I did not know it at the time but that was to be the last of the better fishing for this year as the weather went haywire and floods and frost made fishing difficult. 

                                                                      3lb At last.

December.

As mentioned at the start of this piece my 4lb-9oz crucian caught in 2004 has been accepted as an equal British record.  This came about as a result of a correction of an anomaly where the current 4lb-9dram fish could not have been weighed on the scales being used.  That 9 dram only came about through the Weights & Measures Dept. checking scales in the metric system and needed a conversion back to imperial.  Whatever the reason I’m delighted to have my name added to a rather exclusive club having twice previously come fourth in the bream list, once from Queenford with a 15lb-14oz fish and then again with my 17lb-15oz Broadwater specimen.  Happy days, even though they fell short of a record.

                                                         A British record at 4lb-9oz.

 

Looking at the blog for last December I can see that this was a repeat in that there were very few fish with a lot of hard effort, but yet again the year as a whole has been kind, hopefully your results have met with your hopes as well.

A northern gold medal barbel off the Swale.

Sometimes the reward for effort comes from an unexpected direction; this capture was such a time. As mentioned in the previous blog I travelled up to Wetherby to give a talk to the local Barbel Society members and that seemed to go down quite well. I had generated a new presentation and this was the trial run, so it was very pleasing to get several of the audience approach me when it finished saying they both learned a little and enjoyed the talk as well.

A big advantage of the bed fitted in the van is that I can stay anywhere without a problem, just a short piece of level ground that is out of the way - job done. I had been given the chance to go onto the River Swale, not a new river to me as I had fished it on a one day trip onto the then Barbel Society section at Topcliffe, on that occasion both I and my companion for the trip blanked.  This was a fair number of years ago and I welcomed the chance to try again if only to catch a barbel of any size.

The following morning I met up with the angler who had made the offer, Sean Meeghan, and then we made our way to a local tackle shop where we got the appropriate day ticket for the stretch we were to fish. The tackle dealer did not give much encouragement as he described very poor recent results off the river, but hope springs eternal. Following a trip that ended by going along a number of small, narrow country lanes we arrived and I got the first look at the intended section we would fish. It looked terrific with trees lying alongside the bank to give good looking snag swims but not too many to spoil the effect. Sean mentioned that the heavy rain of the previous afternoon and night might colour the water and sure enough as the day progressed I could see the peat effect showing in the flow.

                                       Typical of the swims I fished but I blanked in this one.

I had taken both pellets, and maggot/caster with hemp to cover the chance of extra water or low water conditions. As it was I felt happy that the maggots should work and I bait dropped several droppers of hemp along with a mix of casters and maggots across the river to my chosen tree snag. This rod would be my main attack and get most of the attention, but I also used the second rod to put a bait out well downstream with pellet on the hook, and a mix of pellets held within an open-ended feeder as described in previous blogs.

My first cast produced a perch of about 1lb but that was it for all my efforts. Both Sean and I had decided that the best approach was to bait up several swims and then try each in turn in the hope to find a swim with resident barbel. By early evening I began to fear the tackle dealer had been right and I would be returning home following a blank on this river yet again. Then about 5:30pm after several different swims I finally got a bite off a barbel. This time my rods were slightly different in that I had the maggot feeder on the inside line and the pellet bait presented more in the middle of the river. This was because the opposite bank was definitely dangerous being one long snag just waiting to give the barbel sanctuary.

When I hit the fish I thought it was a hard fighting good sample and just held on as it tried very hard to go into the tree opposite. I could see the water surface boiling just off the branches that reached into the water and feared that any moment I would get that sickening feeling as the fish got around a branch, fortunately he failed. Once away from the tree he made less effort and was content to swim up and down in front of me just resisting the pressure to come towards the net. Then at last he slipped in and I could call Sean as I had already seen that he was a very good fish. As he arrived the scales and camera were made ready, the usual guessing game was more a case of dropping the weight down as I convinced myself that he could not be as big as I had initially thought, but he was. At 12lb-2oz he was also one of the best the Sean had witnessed off the river and obviously well above anything I had expected. This now means I've taken double figure barbel off 23 different rivers, and since it was not one of my target rivers I still have the Ribble and Goyt to try this season.

                                                               What a beauty at 12lb-2oz.

I had been listening to the Olympics on the radio to sports men and women getting gold medals but I'll this gold medal specimen anytime as my reward. When I slipped him back into his watery home I said goodbye since with a 150 mile trip to the river it is unlikely I will return. I would like to end this piece with a big thank you to Sean who made the capture possible by taking me to the right stretch on the day.