We arrived to hear that the fishing for the Barbel was extremely tough, plus a lot of the other fish had been hammered due to the match; to be perfectly honest, not at all what we wanted to hear! Anyway, we set of to a recommended mark and set up with! fishing extremely light during the day and heavier tactics at night in mind. My first bite came to quivertipped double maggot on light line tactics and turned out to be a fine fish for my first Wye sample - a 5lb 6oz Chub. During the rest of this session I added two other decent Chub whilst Andy managed two Barbel to 7lb; good on him, as they turned out to be the only Barbel we saw!

The next day we set off for another mark much further downstream. Once again the light line tactics were chosen to start with, and before long I was into my first fish of the session; a nice Perch of around 2lb. Once again the rest of the day went by very quietly, but come darkness things started to look up. I had already decided to set up one of my rods with pellets as hook bait and had placed this down my extreme left margin. I had been watching motionless tips for around 45 minutes when I decided to recast. Unfortunately though, as luck would have it, as I was packing my feeder, my pellet rod took an alarming curve but by the time I managed to reach for it my chance had gone; I was gutted! We continued on and caught some nice Chub to a best for Andy of 5lb 12oz.

The following morning was spent using up left over bait quivertipping in a very prolific silver fish stretch. I must confess, I think this session was one of the most fun I had had for a long time! During around 3 hours I landed a really nice bag of Dace with some individual specimens reaching 8oz and a decent Perch. Andy managed a nice Roach of over a pound and a couple of pound plus perch to worm hookbaits. I certainly can't wait to go back!