Des Taylor’s Diary of a Countryman
A great week, despite trashing my truck!
AS I write, the River Severn upstream from Kidderminster is five metres – yes, metres! – above normal summer level. That’s a lot of water, and it will take a while to settle down again.
Not to worry, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy your fishing! Here’s how my week went...
MONDAY
Headed for my first river session of the new season with barbel buddy Wayne Langstone.
I didn’t go on the first day because the Severn was a complete washout and the Warwickshire Avon needed one more day to settle. It was now about a foot up, dropping, and a lovely pale brown colour – perfect.
Sadly, just as the barbel were starting to show an otter appeared in the swim and killed sport stone dead. This is a regular part of the river angler’s day now, and it will only get worse... a lot worse.
TUESDAY
Back on the Avon again, where I baited up for a good hour before I started with my own ‘pudding mix’. I have been using this for six years, but now it’s available on the Evolved Baits website. It is a mix of various flavours and sizes of pellet, crushed hempseed, oyster shell, krill, some crushed Scopex Squid boilies, and a few additives I’ve discovered over the years that give me an edge.
After an hour I cast in my Scopex Squid Nash shelf-life boilie, and within 30 minutes I had a massive pull round on the downstream rod. Straight away I knew it was a decent fish from the way it held out there in the current. Slow, even pressure on the clutch soon brought it to the net... a cracking barbel that weighted in at 13lb 3oz. What a start to the river season!
I continued to introduce bait and started to get a response in the swim with line bites. It was about 10pm by now and I said to Wayne we would have another one before midnight, but once again the furry monster appeared and went straight into my swim, bubbling over where I had put the bait. As expected, I never had another sign of a fish. Indeed the whole river went dead because of this predator.
I’m sick to the teeth of preparing swims and doing everything right, only to have the evening spoiled by a creature that is in such numbers now it’s a joke.
Every decent angler I have spoken to this season has seen or heard one on their river. That can’t be good, can it?
Now I hear that the Angling Trust says it doesn’t believe the problem is anywhere near as big as anglers like me think.
In answer to that, if I was stuck in my tackle den all day every day I would think like that, but when you’re out most days you can see the true extent of this problem.
WEDNESDAY
Up early, and away to Lincolnshire to the Evolved Baits factory to put the finishing touches to a small range of groundbaits with my name on them.
The day went well. I teamed up with compay bait guru James Moore and between us we ended up with the finished product. To be honest I was only tweaking baits I have used in my personal fishing for years, so I wasn’t re-inventing the wheel – I just want other anglers to have the opportunity to use and be successful on them as I have been.
Sadly, the day was ruined when I ‘lost it’ it on a bend at 60mph in very wet conditions, smashing the side of my truck.
Luckily I didn’t get hurt or hurt
anyone else, although the old fishing truck looks a little sad.
THURSDAY
I had some pudding mix left over from the other day and some groundbait that wasn’t perfect from our day together at Evolved Baits, so I thought I would throw it in a local carp pool and fish over it for a few hours while getting my head together after a busy week and the car crash.
Fishing two rods, I had three twenties to 23lb and five big doubles. And I was home for tea, which had to be good!
I took most of the fish hard on the bottom but I did catch the biggest on Chum mixer and a beachcaster rig. With wind and rain it was not the best of weather for floater fishing, but with the beachcaster rig you can just leave it out there until one hangs on, and a couple of carp did just that.
It was certainly a good week for getting my string pulled!
FRIDAY
Today was all about getting traces and gear ready for a two-day sea trip for big tope down on the south coast, which I was really looking forward to.
I love my sea fishing. Indeed, it is my favourite kind of fishing because you just don’t know what you are going to catch next and the chances are the fish has never seen a hook before, or has a silly name! Then it was time for my Friday night live show on Facebook which, in the last few weeks, has been getting 10,000 views each week.