Piscatorial Quagswagging

...the diary of a specialist angler in around the Warwickshire Avon and its tributaries.

Thursday 21 September 2017

Warwickshire Avon – Albuttbarbelbutt and Autothaumaturgists

It’s a long story so I won’t bore you with it, but during a fishy related bedtime story the mysterious and biggest Barbel in the Warwickshire Avon which has eluded me so far has been nicknamed by 6 year old Sam as the infamous,

Albuttbarbelbutt !!!!

Albuttbarbelbutt
Now Albuttbarbelbutt has been spotted by me sometime ago now and more recently by someone I bumped in to from a club water we fish. You see, because of an additional book for the season, he had strayed off his patch and found himself in waters very familiar to me. So with the river low and clear as it is, he had, like I tend to do, went from swim to swim to check out the contours and features of the river as it will be of benefit when the waters are up.

Bed mapping if you will.

Holes, deep runs that sort of thing.

One particular swim where I have fished from time to time for winter Chub, the nameless spotted a Barbel of brobdingnagian proportions calmly going about its business.

Albuttbarbelbutt, bold as brass, right there.


Having seen this mythical creature with my own eyes, it’s nice to know someone else has seen its unmistakable silhouette, after all, seeing is believing.

"It was massive"

"sadly motionless tips after trying for a few times"

Since the sharing of information I fished it once since, and remained biteless, but this short evening session, I was here in to dusk, if it’s around, I was hoping to tempt.


To be honest any Barbel would be nice here, for starters there seem to be less of them now, but not only that, the ones that I have caught here in the past have been a good stamp, culminating in my mediocre PB of 11lb 11oz's.

It’s a decent size swim with no pressure, so two rods, upstream rod a 18mm Mainline Spicy Crab wafter, the downstream rod a Hinders Barbel Bomb Chunks, both with PVA bags of freebies, also a scattering of small boilies.

I've had success with big baits for Barbel especially when trying to avoid the Chub, so these are my standard fodder to be honest.


So three quarters of an hour before dusk the rods go in....

Nothing much happened till the isotopes and bats were prevalent and then the Chub moved in to the swim, these are not quite the Poka-Yoke rig I developed but bang, tug, twang the baits were getting attention but nothing properly doing.

Then 10 minutes before my leaving time as don't want to take the pee, the left hand rod does the three confident pulls before usually the rod hoops over and it's a Barbel but this time it didn't get past the pulls, hmmmmm.

With one rod retrieved and packed away a few taps develop in to a bite and a fish is on.

Sadly a small Chub that got my landing net wet, the little ******

I'll be back, as Arnie said....

No I haven't been drinking, well no more than usual anyway.

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