KEY POINTS FROM THE MATCH

It was vitally important to plumb the depth all the way out and down the swim. Too many anglers don’t spend enough time doing this in my opinion.

While a light stick float rig was okay for close in, I needed the 6g and 10g floats to present and slow down the hookbait in mid river.

Strong catapults are important so make sure you carry spares or at least some spare elastics.

While I normally ‘feed to response’ this was a day when I had to feed a lot of bait to get the fish interested. Over the course of five hours, I fed four pints of maggots and a pint of casters and hemp.

Always fish as strong as you can get away with. Barbel are powerful fish and there’s no point hooking one if you’re going to lose it because of weak line.

Keep going! It’s easy to give up when things aren’t working. I believed that my approach was going to work and finally it did.