A day on the wye

Judith has been expressing a desire to catch a barbel for years now, and with us both having Friday off and with not much rain about, we decided to go over onto the Wye to have a pop. Shaun and John in the shop recommended we go to the  aramstone  stretch which is run by Stan Turner for the estate. We stopped off at the Gloucester services for breakfast, and I got to only score it a 2.75, very disappointing, and very expensive, still we got to the river at about midday , to be met by Stan, who had kept a swim for us, he called it the pump swim , well there is an old pump in the bank, we were quite surprised as to how busy it was, there were 13 other anglers spread over the stretch, we got fishing at about 12.30,

We got to say its a beautiful stretch of water, even if there were nearly 40 swans in our peg most of the day, we normally fail miserably when we try to catch a specific species, but after about 45 minutes of regular casting with a big 70gram cage feeder filled with swimstim method mix with a bag of halibut groundbait with also some tuna fish and a lot 6mm halibut pellets, Judith rod hooped over and she was attached to her first ever barbel, and it was a nice fish of nearly 7lb, she was over the moon to be honest, and I was well pleased , job done really with mission accomplished.

She soon followed it up with another one , but slightly smaller, I was now 2 down and was getting worried, but I soon had a couple of my own, both in the 5/6 lb bracket, nice fish and good fighters.

I treated us to a nice coffee Made with the help of our Kelly kettle, and I must say its a good way of having a boil up on the bank, all you need is a few twigs to get some boiling water.

Stan drove up and down a few times and told us that most people were struggling , with only odd fish coming out, so we stuck to our task, regular casting with the big feeders , it must have been the right thing to do as we had odd fish during the afternoon, and missed a few bites aswell, the best bait seemed to be double hair rigged  8mm halibut pellet, towards the end of the day Judith contacted with a slightly better fish, and while she was playing it I hooked one too, but it was only about 5lb which I got out quickly, and returned, Judith took a bit longer as it turned out to be the biggest fish of the day  at 7.10, which is also bigger than my best ever by 1oz.

That was the last of the action, as we had to be off the water by 7pm, but it was a brilliant day with Judith, and finished off with a peach of a sunset in a beautiful piece of countryside.

We ended up with 8 barbel , which was good on the day as the other 13 anglers only managed 6 between them, I don't think it will be to long before we are back for another go.