Fishing a small stream last friday - Talk Angling fishing chat and tackle advice

BoldBear · 4th July 2008, 12:05 PM

I tried another of my clubs stretches of the upper river Lea on Friday evening from 5pm till 9pm. I have always resisted fishing there as my friends tell me that it always gets very crowded; and the first 15 or so swims were as expected full of anglers. There are some quieter swims which are great for Barbel but these are a good 10 to 15 minutes walk from the car park. and I thought that I would just plonk in after the last full swim nearer the car park and see if I could winkle out a couple as it was the first time I had actually fished this section of the river.
One of my mates whetted my appetite when he said hed had Barbel of 7.5lb and a couple around 5lb plus some 3lb+ chub when he fished there all day last week; plus there were reports of a few 2lb Roach being caught there earlier in the week by anglers trotting tight to the far bank against the rushes. I chose a swim that had some nice features with cleaner deeper scoured out gravel either side of streamer weed in a faster centre flow caused by a small narrowing of the banks.
Further downstream amongst the other anglers the bed was a little more silty and I expected some Barbel to move upsteam to feed on this deeper cleaner gravel. where food was congregating before then drifting off slowly downstream. (see below)

This was my swim with a cleaner deeper gravelly bottom on both sides at the lower end of the swim.

This was a shot upstream showing a cattle drink and below this where it bacame deeper and the current was being squeezed between a slight narrowing of the bank.

There were only one or two people a few swims away upstream of me and the person in the swim below me was a good distance away.
I only had three good classic Barbel bites and only landed the first two Barbel, the third Barbel managed to spit out the barbless hook.
Here are the pictures of the two Barbel that I managed to catch; not huge (5lb 4oz and 4lb 3oz of pure muscle) but an enjoyable evenings fishing on a small stream nonetheless.

The Bait I used was small hair-rigged pre-drilled salmon pellets (Sonubaits Pellet O's) on a size 8 barbless short shank hook with small soft halibut pellets (Dynamite) for feed.

It always amazes me when Anglers drive past streams on their way to the Canal or lake where they sit looking at their floats all day or catch a net full of stunted Roach and Bream and they don't even think about fishing the small stream that they drove over with all of its quality fishing. sometimes on other stretches I get the stream almost to myself which is how I like it.