Quest Baits Blog

Words and pictures by Pat Gillett:

I have just got back from a week’s social in France with my non-fishing kid brother David. He wanted to see what all the fuss was about fishing in France. I was his gillie for the week, finding clear spots, placing the baits etc. I must have done a decent job has by Tuesday he was already asking me ‘where are we going next year?’

We travelled down on the Friday and stopped in a lovely little campsite right by the side of the River Marne in Epernay. It was obvious from the brown colour and the height of the river that France had, had a very wet spring like the one we have just had. This became even more apparent when we got to the lake and found that the water level was actually coming over the front of the stagings.

The lake was very weedy at our end and was very much uniform in depth ranging from 7 1/2 feet to 9 feet in depth. It had steep margins that just fell straight off to about 8 feet. On arrival I spent a couple of hours leading about and marking the lines for the first night. Whenever I get to a new water I never put much bait in on the first night and this was to be no different has I put no more than 40 boilies over any of the rods. I put 2 rods each in open water and one rod each to the far margin at the bottom of the shelf. Baits were a mixture of the Quest Rahja Spice and Magnum White Boilies. The first night produced 2 upper doubles to my far margin rod but nothing to any of the other rods. continue reading…

Words and pictures by Pat Gillett:

The River Dove is in there somewhere!

I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe the end of the ‘river season’ has come around so quickly!

Looking back on the season it has been a bit of a strange one really and I can’t recall ever spending less time on the river bank. The season started with a month of flooding which saw some of my local rivers peaking at record high levels. Because of work commitments and the timing of the high levels only one trip was possible during the first 4 weeks of the season.

July proved to a very productive month for me on the River Dove, but only because I fished an ‘unfancied’ area that other anglers very rarely bother with. I believe that due to the fact that the early summer was so wet and at times cold, the barbel were very late in spawning and as such many of the usually productive early season spots were devoid of fish. The area I found was very shallow but absolutely full of streamer weed, ideal barbel spawning grounds. Five short afternoon / evenings (total 30 hours) produced 14 good sized barbel which included 10 doubles, during which time the guys fishing the usual spots had next to nothing (it always amazes me how anglers continuously go back to their ‘favourite swims’, even if the fish aren’t there). An invaluable

12lb 12oz from a very productive July

lesson learn’t about barbel location for future seasons if we have a cold / wet early summer. Interestingly as well, nearly all of the bigger fish fell to the ever faithful Special Crab boilies.

During August I tried ‘a new stretch’ on the Upper Trent, which again proved worthwhile and provided knowledge for the future, has I have now found a stretch where you can still fish reasonably comfortably when the river is carrying a bit of water and there is loads of the ‘dreaded Trent weed coming down’. Special Crab again produced some fish. Some nice fish were again caught from the Dove including a very rare full moon capture of 12lb 6oz. continue reading…

The River Trent in a raging flood

With the shocking river conditions we are experiencing at the moment with widespread floods everywhere we posed a question to top Barbel angler Pat Gillett…

Question:  After all of these massive floods we have seen this past week with it being impossible to get near the natural banks of the rivers what would your approach be once it is possible to get back on the banks?
Would you be looking for areas in the flow, on the crease or out of the main flow?
Similarly do you think the make up of the bottom is important? Are you happy fishing over mud/silt or do you prefer harder gravel and stone? continue reading…

Friday 5^th October – River Dove

10lb 4oz

This was a quick splash and dash session with a mate from work, in a quest to get him his first double figured barbel. I chose a very lightly fished stretch where we could fish 2 swims that were relatively close together.

We didn’t start fishing till about 5.45pm and at about 6.45pm my downstream rod produced a slow pull round which after an excellent fight saw nice fish of 10lb 4oz in the net. The whittled down 15mm Special Crab and paste combination doing the damage.

I fished on till 11.30pm with no further indication, but to be honest for the last 3 hours, I knew I was in the wrong swim as the river was rising and the debris coming downstream in the fast flow made the fishing very difficult. My mates swim was slightly easier to fish, but unfortunately he managed to lose 2 fish, admitting later that he wasn’t prepared for the power of the fish, but at least he did witness his first double in the flesh.

Weather wise a perfect night for fishing with low cloud and a warm breeze with an air temp of 11 Deg. C, just a shame the river was rising.

Saturday 6^th October

A totally different night to last night with a clear bright sky and a grass frost by 9pm. The river though was falling and I was fishing a different stretch anyway, where the flow was far more sedate, and so the fishing was much easier.

The same set up was employed, although one rod carried a 16mm pellet as hook bait. I fished from 4.30pm to 11pm and had 2 barbel, which unusually turned out to be exactly the same size, they were both bang on 9lb 15oz (definitely different fish).

Both fish again falling to the Special Crab with nothing coming to the pellet. This if like previous seasons will happen more and more as the year progresses and the boilies and paste will far outscore the pellet

continue reading…

Thurs 2^nd August – River Dove

As predicted at the end of my last blog piece the fishing has certainly slowed down. The river was the lowest it has been all season and apart from a few small knocks there was nothing at all to show for the 6 hours of this trip.

I did have a strange occurrence when at about 8pm the downstream rod started knocking and then the line dropped incredibly slack. I thought a small chub had hooked itself, I picked the rod up (no need to strike), only to find my main line fluttering in the breeze with no tackle on it whatsoever. I had been fishing a relatively slack line over a large bed of streamer weed, and the only thing that I can think of, is that a pike must of swam through the line and ‘bit me off’. I have had this happen whilst carp fishing on lakes, but never before on the river.

Apart from a spectacular lightning storm in the far distance, nothing else of any interest happened on what was a very ‘dead’ river, when there weren’t even any fish ‘topping’ at dusk.

Sun 19th August – River Dove

Went for the evening with a mate from work who is new to the river. We fished a stretch that was kind to me last year, although due to abstraction by ‘diggers’ at the bottom end of the stretch the flow had increased greatly. They had removed some large islands that used to ‘back the flow up’ and so now the river just kept on going over some newly made rapid shallows.

By about 9pm I told my mate we were not going to catch. He asked me how I knew, and explained that the river just ‘didn’t feel right’. I find that a lot, after years of experience you get that sort of ‘sixth sense’ if you like, whereby you very often know whether you are going to catch or not pretty early, and sometimes even get it when ‘I know when I am going to catch a good fish’.

Anyway my instincts were proven correct has I couldn’t buy a bite off anything, even on tiny baits like 8mm pellets and trimmed 10mm boilies.

Looking through various barbel forums, it appears that nearly everybody is struggling, something I said would happen after the fish had fed so hard in the early coloured water. continue reading…

Words and Pictures by Pat Gillett:

Rain, rain and more rain!

A bit of a frustrating time for me recently, after having the ‘old closed season’ break and not fishing for 3 months, I was really looking forward to getting out on the river for some early season fishing, especially as the Dove and Trent were carrying some extra water and colour (which would almost guarantee some good sport). However circumstances conspired against me for a variety of reasons and it was 28^th June before I could make my first trip.

28^th June – River Dove

Typical of the way things are going at the moment, I had booked the afternoon off on the very day that the Midlands saw the most freakish monsoon in living memory. I was at work in the morning when at about 10.30 it went so dark that the street lamps actually came on an incredible sight and something that I had never seen before. There then followed an incredible monsoon that lead to severe flash flooding in many areas (our factory shop floor had almost 8” of water on it in places because the roof and guttering could not cope) so a trip to the river seemed a bit dodgy. Still I had booked the time off and so decided to go anyway.

The Upper Trent had already burst its banks in many areas so it would be a trip to the Dove, which would probably be just about fish able (as it was carrying much less water to start with). We arrived at the river at about 4pm and could see that in certain areas it had already come over the top of its banks. A 20 minute walk downstream and we could see that there were one or two areas that would be fishable as long as there wasn’t too much rubbish coming downstream. My mate dropped in by a sluice and I fished a crease swim where the current ‘backed up’ on the inside, which should give me the best chance of a half decent presentation on a fast rising river. continue reading…