The Sessions - Oct 2023
Storm Babet & Funny Stories
Last month was filled with hospital visits, two surgeries and a nasty fall leaving me with a very swollen right arm, but I still managed to get a few trips in and landed 70 Barbel with a rolling meat PB at 16-07.
As much as I love Autumn fishing I do think that the annual leave fall has a negative impact on our rivers and puts the fish off for a while and as we roll into October that time has arrived so swim choice would be vital.
01 October 2023 – River Trent, tidal
I finished last month half way through a session, and having met up with Tim Jansen for 24 hours I packed the swim down for a move after the Mitten Crabs had been destroying my deadbaits.
The conditions were too good to ignore, low pressure, 14 degrees, a light south westerly and raining so I made the effort and was set up on another section by mid-afternoon on 30 Sept. I fished both rods for Zander and after a lot of taps and plucks on the rod tip I hooked a good Zed and it promptly came off under the rod top, very frustrating fishing. The next take was more positive and stripped line from the reel and as I suspected it was a Pike at approx. 13 pounds.
I changed over to Barbel on dark and had been trickling BBB in through the afternoon and then gave the swim a hit of 50 boilies after I cast both rigs out. I expected bites straight away and was very surprised only have had one by midnight at approx. 9 pounds.
It was a very warm wet night and it wasn’t until the 8m tide turned that I had five quick bites with fish to 10-08 and 12-15 to finish the session.
07 October 2023 – River Trent, tidal
I spent the Friday evening at home with Julie and headed back up the A1 early Saturday morning, I had a guide trip fishing for Barbel arranged so went up early to check the river level and look for available swims. I got to the car park at 07:15 to find it as busy as I’d seen it which wasn’t ideal so I walked the whole section, the area I wanted to fish was busy and the angler was a having a great session so that looked promising, there were other people dotted along covering a lot of the section so swim choice was quite restricted.
The river level was good at .94m with smaller tides at 6.40m, I identified an area where three of us could fish and cover 150m of water so plenty of room and it is an area I have done well on previously so I felt we’d be ok. Kes Keary and his son Harry arrived at 10:00 and it was obvious straight away we’d all get on very well, they are lovely people and keen anglers. We barrowed the gear down to the swims and set up.
As I’ve mentioned in my blogs previously I never intended on starting guiding for another couple of years but was talked into it by Tony Shep last season, so here we are and I have really enjoyed sharing my knowledge and experiences with other like-minded anglers.
I spent the first two to three hours talking about and showing Kes and Harry watercraft, how I locate spots using the Deeper and a lead, my baiting strategy and making rigs and then we were ready to start fishing.
They started fishing at 13:30 and I sat with them until just before dark before walking up to my swim and flicking the rigs out, we were fishing on the outside of a big bend so it was very accurate casting and baiting up and I felt we’d all do well and with Kes being in the best spot I hoped he’d trip up a decent one.
Things don’t always turn out as planed and with the conditions being so good I was very surprised that none of us had a Barbel, Kes unfortunately lost two, one to a hook pull and the other got its head down in the rocks and cut him off just above the hook, Harry had four Bream and I had two Bream.
Very disappointing but we all still enjoyed being out and I’ve arranged to take them both out again this winter as I really want to see them catch.
13 October 2023 – River Trent, tidal
The rain arrived on the Thursday and poured non-stop all day and night so I was expecting the river to rise very quickly as the surrounding fields were already saturated. I was going to Gunthorpe to continue my hunt for the big Barbel, Black Spot, but the level was already too high for that area so I drove down to Cromwell to find it very busy and only one swim in the area I wanted was free. With Potty next door it would have been easy to settle for that, have a social, fish behind the van and hopefully have a few fish but I just didn’t feel it was the right swim, and after sitting pondering for an hour I decided to look further down the tidal.
I pulled into the car park seven miles downstream to find only one van there, it was pouring with rain so no surprise really, I got the new Jack Pyke water proofs on, got the leading rod and Deeper out of the van and went for a walk.
The only angler there was my pal Jason so it was good to catch up with him and then I walked the section checking a number of spots with the Deeper and a lead. The level was rising fast with more rubbish coming down as time passed so I knew I’d need an area of slack water close in, it was pouring with rain and would have been very easy just to drop in a spot and start but I wanted to be confident I wouldn’t have to move so kept going.
To give you an idea of the effort needed sometimes, I was on the river from 11:00 and didn’t get into a swim until 19:30 and it hadn’t stopped raining the whole time, the river was .94m when I arrived and had risen to 1.30m by the time I set up, it was flying up!!
I started in an area fishing only a rod length out but after two hours I knew it wasn’t right, the water was back eddying up and dragging the rigs out of position so I moved again fishing tight to an over-hanging tree and was finally fishing properly by 22:30.
14 October 2023
I had seven bites through the night, five Bream, a Carp at mid-double and a 9-09 Barbel, the rain had finally stopped but the river was flying up at 1.54m making many areas unfishable. With a 7m tide due I knew I’d have to move the shelter back so did it quickly before it started to rain again.
I changed one rod over to Zander and had a fish at approx. 6 pound straight away and for the rest of the day had lots of plucks and pulls but didn’t hook any of them.
The Barbel rod went over at teatime with a lovely fish at 12-04 so I changed the other rod back to Barbel for the night and baited up again with 30 BBB.
The Bream moved into the area and were rolling a rod length out, the sky cleared and it got very cold but with constant takes from Bream it was a busy evening with one other Barbel coming before midnight at 10-12.
15 October 2023
I’d been topping up the bait after every fish and it paid off as just after midnight the bites were regular with lots of Bream, a lost Carp and Barbel at 9plus, 11-15, 10-06, 10-10, 10-08 and 10-03, no monsters but a reward for a lot of effort in finding a fishable area.
22 October 2023 – River Lea, Kings Weir
Storm Babet had hammered the country causing mass flooding, lots of wind damage and even some very unfortunate deaths up in Scotland; with most of the Newark area under water with the level at 3.54m and the A1 closed I wasn’t going to be fishing the Trent anytime soon so I had to look for somewhere else that might be fishable.
I checked the level at Kings Weir and thought it was worth a look so drove down for 14:00, it was cloudy with sunny spells and warm at 13 degrees. I walked the section looking for slack areas to target, it was bank high, heavily coloured a pushing through but there were areas I could fish so I went back to the van and loaded the barrow.
I settled in a swim for the evening and flicked the rig out with an 18mm BBB and pva bag and baited with 20 15mm BBB through the swim. I’d checked with a lead and found a slightly deeper area at 6 feet that I hoped may hold one of the big fish that live on the section.
I had to recast every 90 mins due to weed in the flow but it was holding nicely and I sat there in anticipation.
The evening passed up to midnight and with the rules being off at midnight and back on at 04:00 I packed up and slept by the car.
23 October 2023
I was back on the section in a different swim for 05:30 and fished through until 11:00 without a bite. There are not many fish on the section but some are very big so I am expecting many blanks but am hopeful of catching a very big PB this winter.
I spent the next two hours with a leading rod checking lots of areas for future sessions and found one lovely spot that I dropped some bait on ready for my next trip in November.
Two things that made me smile this month:
The first was as I was leaving Kings Weir and driving slowly over the canal bridge I saw a young man with two dogs that just didn’t go together, a French Bull Dog and an Alsatian, and he didn’t have control of them so I slowed right down to a crawl so he could get them back, I put my hand up to say high and he just turned away talking into his phone, oh well not to worry.
So I continued down the small lane to the junction to find another older man with a small dog, again he had no control so I stopped, he looked at me and was talking into a hand held radio and again did not acknowledge me.
I carried on over the railway chuckling to myself and drove into the estate to be swooped on by plain clothes police with the blues and sirens going full metal jacket…..
Turns out they thought I was one of the travellers from the site on the other side of the lane and clearly the one they were staked out for, they were gutted to find I was JB from Cambridgeshire and I’ve no doubt the traveller kids riding their bikes as look outs were straight back to dad to tell him to stay in for the day. The funniest thing about it was the undercover police look outs were on the wrong side of the lane and would have completely missed any vans coming out of the traveller site…….
The second one was the capture of a very big Barbel from the middle Trent by an angler that had travelled up from Cornwall and been lucky enough to have a huge fish at 19-08 and it was only his fourth ever Barbel.
I saw the photos on FB and was a happy for him and at the same time wishing I had that type of lottery winning luck, and as I looked the photos more closely I thought I recognised the fish. A quick chat to Potty confirmed we both thought the same thing, it was the fish we hadn’t seen or heard of since Aug 2022 and I had spent the last two summer and autumns fishing for……in the wrong bloody section, it had clearly gone up through the lock and was happily living its life approx. 2 miles above the section I’d been fishing, I had to laugh about it as I’d caught so many fish in pursuit of this one fish, many of them a few times and had my winter planned out for this fish.
As you can guess my winter plans have now changed 😃🤞
Until next month, tight lines and be lucky 😃
Big thanks to my sponsors for their continued support,