Quest Baits Blog

June 2011 and with the Grenville season closed from the end of May until the end of June I took a break from carp fishing for a while. I had several jobs I wanted to do at home and  if I didn’t get them done over the 2 month close season I know full well that I would be another 12 months before I got them done.

Living on my own I find it too easy to go through life enjoying myself and in recent years have tended to put more and more decorating type jobs off, thinking ‘I’ll do it next week’ but never do!

I'm quite lucky where I live with a nice choice of walks

I like to have an hour walk in the morning before work with Brook my Staffordshire Bull Terrier bitch.  Being quite fortunate where I live I can alternate this between a wooded hill walk or a river walk without having to get into the car and drive anywhere.

It was during one of these morning river walks that I spotted a few chub in my local river which were larger than I had seen before. Now these weren’t monsters by any stretch of the imagination but were larger than I had realised were living there.

The following morning I was feeding them 10mm boilies and soon our varied dog walks saw us not varying it at all and all of the walks were down the river as I started to get these fish waiting for their breakfast each morning. Brook didn’t seem to mind the ‘same old’ routine as she was included in a few boilies treats herself which she didn’t get on the hill walk.

It was whilst feeding these chub that I stumbled across some barbel – again not monsters but lovely to see on the river where I had first cut my angling teeth. I had caught tiny gudgeon sized barbel there 10 years previously whilst teaching Ruth to trot a float and to be fair had forgotten about them. Now it seemed they had grown on a little and would be good fun to try and catch on such a tiny river. On a stretch of around a mile I had found 5 barbel. 2 pools had 2 in each (along with lots of chub) and one pool had just one and again with lots of chub. I ended up watching and feeding these same 5 barbel every day not actually seeing any others. continue reading…

Nige fishing the delightful Bristol Avon

Well finally I made the drive down to Bristol to meet up with Nige Cobham to celebrate the first week-end of the river season. The invite had originally come five years ago and one thing and another kept seeing it pushed aside but this year we were both determined to make the trip happen and what better time than the start of the season.

So after a surprisingly clear run down the motorway system I found myself greeted on the drive by Nige who quickly beckoned me into his house before thrusting a huge glass of red wine into my hand and we started picking up where we had left off five years previously at a British Carp Study Group fish-in where we had found ourselves in adjacent swims and had a thoroughly enjoyable week-end swapping the odd story or two. It always amazes me how many friends I have in common with people when on the bank.

Obviously we had a lot of catching up to do and I’m sure some of the wine must have evaporated but before long Nige’s wife Fiona had left us to it talking the usual angler talk and before we knew it it was 2am and we really should think about sleep.

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