I was fishing a small river the other evening and latched onto something that I don't know what it was, let me explain.
The river is 20 feet wide and on average 3 feet deep, a clear bank on the side you fish from, with reeds and bull rushes on the far bank. The bottom has a bit of weed in places but is mainly stones and gravel.
The flow is nice and steady and I was running a stick float down with 4lb line straight through to a 16 hook, fishing with maggot and worm on the hook. I put in a couple of handfulls of 4mm pellet and hemp in as I set up and fed maggot and caster while fishing.
I caught various species and sizes of fish and lost 3 descent fish one of which is what I'm coming to. I've caught carp in this river that run to 20lb+. Now when these carp are hooked they head off downstream and create a V shaped wave as they take off, this is not what happened when I latched onto a particular fish.
As soon as I struck into this fish it took off downstream at a teriffic speed without creating any wave and I didn' see it at all, the hook pulled out after about a 20 yard run without changing speed, direction or the feeling that it wasn't going to stop.
Last evening the same thing happened to another angler fishing from the same peg as I was fishing on the Monday, the way the fish took off was exactly the same scenario as what happened to me.
We did put som barbel in this river about 5 years ago at 8 to 10 inches long but I have had no witnessed reports of anyone catching them.
I've done my best to explain the details, but it's a bit difficult without actually seeing it happen.
The big question is, could it have been barbel, if it was then my previous experiences of catching them would suggest that it was 5lb+.
What do other MD's think?
The river is 20 feet wide and on average 3 feet deep, a clear bank on the side you fish from, with reeds and bull rushes on the far bank. The bottom has a bit of weed in places but is mainly stones and gravel.
The flow is nice and steady and I was running a stick float down with 4lb line straight through to a 16 hook, fishing with maggot and worm on the hook. I put in a couple of handfulls of 4mm pellet and hemp in as I set up and fed maggot and caster while fishing.
I caught various species and sizes of fish and lost 3 descent fish one of which is what I'm coming to. I've caught carp in this river that run to 20lb+. Now when these carp are hooked they head off downstream and create a V shaped wave as they take off, this is not what happened when I latched onto a particular fish.
As soon as I struck into this fish it took off downstream at a teriffic speed without creating any wave and I didn' see it at all, the hook pulled out after about a 20 yard run without changing speed, direction or the feeling that it wasn't going to stop.
Last evening the same thing happened to another angler fishing from the same peg as I was fishing on the Monday, the way the fish took off was exactly the same scenario as what happened to me.
We did put som barbel in this river about 5 years ago at 8 to 10 inches long but I have had no witnessed reports of anyone catching them.
I've done my best to explain the details, but it's a bit difficult without actually seeing it happen.
The big question is, could it have been barbel, if it was then my previous experiences of catching them would suggest that it was 5lb+.
What do other MD's think?
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