BIG FISH COLUMN: Reid bags best barbel of season

The transition from summer to autumn fishing can be prolonged or very abrupt depending upon the weather and after the summer many of us have faced I would suggest that most of us will be hoping for the latter.

As I write this the skies are steely grey, there is a hint of rain in the air and a decided chill which suggests that fall is indeed approaching rapidly – despite the odd day of brilliant, warm sunshine. To be honest local angling during the past week has not been too bad and results, on the rivers at least.

The rivers are still, however, looking very stagnant and desperately in need of a good flush to freshen them up. We complained bitterly during those washout summer floods in previous years but they did at least leave the water in spanking form.

As far as the river fishing is concerned the local Thames may be low and slow and chub and barbel few and far between but the bream continue to feed hard and anglers venturing out at dusk and into darkness in and around Marlow are finding plenty of fish with the groundbait feeder proving to be the telling method.

Marlow’s Ray Taylor used the feeder packed with a mix of brown crumb, pellets, chopped worm and marine halibut groundbait to get a shoal of slabs feeding last weekend and, fishing roughly halfway across the river with a worm and maggot cocktail on a size 16 hook to a 4lb hooklength and 6lb main line, he netted 10 bream to around the 6lb mark fishing the first three hours of darkness.

Ray tells me he was sure he could have caught all night if he had the stamina for it – there’s a challenge for someone.

The smaller local rivers are beginning to show a little more barbel form and although I’m told St Pat’s is still a bit dour there have been encouraging signs on both the Loddon and the Kennet.

Although doubles have started appearing in stretches controlled by local clubs the best barbel reported by a local rod was a Loddon fish of 9lb which took the pellet hookbait offered by Andy Reid during a late afternoon into evening session on the river at Charvil. Andy used a dropper to prime a near bank glide with a mix of 3 and 6mm pellets before legering a single monster crab-soaked 14mm pellet offering over the top.

A couple of twitchy line bites alerted Andy to the presence of a fish in the swim shortly before 8pm and at ten past the hour his tip pulled round sharply. With 8lb line straight through to a size 8 hook Andy netted the fish without trouble after a couple of minutes to record his best barbel of the season to date.

With autumnal weather forecast for the week ahead and September definitely here I suspect we may all be seeing a few more barbel in the weeks ahead.

Any anglers wishing to report catches may contact me on 07780 755138 or ian@bigfishtrail.com