Dave Lumb with a 13lb 1oz barbel, biggest of a two double brace caught on single Monster Crab and Mussel Tuff 1 fished over mixed Tuna Spod mix and halibut pellets.

13-01 on Tuff 1's

Excerpt from Dave's Lumbland blog

Why I insist on walking to the furthest swims on the stretch when the ones closest to the access point seem to produce the biggest fish I suppose must be down to cussedness, the fact that it is more peaceful away from the crowds, or maybe I want to prove to myself that I can catch barbel by finding them through watercraft rather than looking for other people's bankstick holes.

I stopped half way to the swims I had in mind on the pretext of throwing some pellets in the swim where I had lost that fish on Tuesday, but in reality it was because I couldn't walk much further! Indeed, I considered plonking down in the next swim downstream to spend a relaxing few hours soaking up the sun and chilling. I didn't, I carried on.

On reaching the swim I fancied, a steady glide below a crease, with grass, nettles and balsam hanging over the margin, I sprinkled in some mixed pellets in the edge a couple of yards below where I set up my chair. Then I went and threw some more in a semi-slack under some trees at the end of the stretch ready for a move towards dark.

I soon had one rod out fishing a Tuff 1 off the rod end and began tying up some spare hooklinks. Then rain began to fall. I'd almost left the weighty brolly behind, but was glad I hadn't as I sat there in my T-shirt tying rigs and then filling PVA mesh bags with pellets. The rain stopped and I cast out a second rod, upstream and slightly across, with a four pellet snake as bait.

It was great to be sat by the river looking across the river at a sheepy meadow bordered by willows with a church spire lit by the sun against the big, Constable-cloudy sky. Life felt good as I listened to the Archers. The programme was reaching a saucy climax when the idyll was shattered by the close in rod top puling savagely down towards the water and the baitrunner screeching like a mad thing. I think a barbel was involved too!

That split second between the take registering in the brain and starting to play the fish are a mystery. Do I pick the rod up then stand, or is it the other way round? I have no idea how I come to be holding on to a bending rod once that tip moves!

This was no four pounder, and it was no eight pounder either. The rod bent to its limit throughout the fight and the clutch ticked a few times too. I'd ditched the mono, and my 'small river' eleven footers, after Tuesday's fiasco and was using my trusty, go-anywhere Chimeras and 30lb Power Pro. The fish was history! Sure enough, after a decent but brief scrap, it was pretty soon in the net and shortly after in the sling and being hoisted by the scales. The first double of the season, chunky, golden flanked in the August light, and a new river PB.