Quest Baits Blog

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…

4 hours on a February afternoon.

I’m sure when Shaun was designing the new ‘Absolute’ range he didn’t have barbel in mind, but as soon as I saw and smelled Absolute Seafood I had to try it.

I had no intention of fishing today, but the weather was mild and I knew the river was fining down. A quick check of the river level on the EA website and I knew exactly where I wanted to be. Sorry but I can’t tell you where!

http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/homeandleisure/floods/riverlevels/default.aspx

It took minutes to load the gear in the car, a couple more to pick up the sandwiches from the garage and within an hour I was there.  Then disaster, there were four rods, a bivvy and a team of car door slammers in my banker swim.  I walked downstream around the bend to get as far away as possible and found another slack area, no back eddy here but a steady flow that was manageable and a clearly define crease running along its edge. continue reading…

Rod bending action on the first day of the year.

I am not one for making new year resolutions but I guess deep down for a while now I have promised myself a little more time angling on my local patch and to try and not keep pestering the carp week in and week out. It is so easy to find yourself in a routine simply because it suits. For years now I have pointed my Land Rover bonnet south or west and driven for a couple of hours for most all of my angling and in doing so I invariably pass so much incredible fishing along the way.

It wasn’t always like this. I started to travel simply because I had to travel if I was to be able to fish for the size of fish that used to seem so important to me. But as the years have moved on and I have grown, the fish have too and now I have fish on my doorstep which are much larger than the fish I used to have to travel for a couple of hours to reach. Having said that, I’m not size motivated at all these days. I haven’t been for years as in my mind the venue, the methods, the people and to a certain extent the security, come much higher on my list of priority than the size of the fish these days. Okay, obviously it is a massive bonus if I can combine everything and still have big fish to angle for.  continue reading…

What incredible weather we have been having. As always I keep a close watch on water temperatures through the winter months and despite catching a few carp on New Years day I couldn’t ignore how warm the rivers were getting and the barbel were calling me.

I managed to get out for a couple of hours on a small river and was rewarded with a couple of nice chub. Really nice fishing wandering around with one rod and lowering apple cored Rahja Spice boilies with a Rahja Spice paste wrap into various likely looking holes. Really rewarding and ‘proper angling’ with me feeling really content after getting out there and finding the fish rather than sitting and waiting for them to find me.

Later in the day after getting a few jobs out of the way the rivers were still calling so I decided to spend a couple of hours trying for the barbel on the River Trent. The Trent is still quite high so I was going to have to anchor my baits in place and build a swim with big cage feeders. 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…