Barbel Fishing
I have not specifically fished for barbel too often, but a short story of my best fish of just under 8 pounds follows
I had gone down to the Thames at Sonning just to have a go at the barbel that I knew could be caught there. The river was really rushing along and I found a swim where a large bush was partly in and partly out of the water. I had decided to float fish as it was a more pleasurable experience than ledgering. I cast the heavy avon type float upstream past the bush and let the flow bring it down towards me, and with a bit of care I could make it come into the slack water behing the bush, where it happily sat, slowly coming back down towards me. I had been fishing for about an hour and it had started to rain heavily, and I was starting to feel a cold. Suddenly the float that was upstream was now past me and going downstrean very fast. I felt the line tighten and the clutch scream. There was no apparent obstruction down from me so I let the fish take some line against a tightened clutch. The downstream pace slackened and stopped and slowly I managed to retake some of the lost line. Suddenly panic set in as I could feel the reel moving under my hand and I tried to push the two reel retainers tighter together. Now this was a barbel rod of 1 pound 6 oz test curve but it had one big failing and that was that it did not have a locking reel seat, and there had been many times when I had the reel come loose but this time it was to get much worse. The reel fell of the rod, bounced once on the ground and dissapeared into the river. I am now trying to stay calm and puzzle out what would be the best and safest way to get out of this situation, remember that the river was running very fast and any slip here could result in being drowned. Pulling the rod in I managed to find the line where it left the rod going down to the reel, and with my right hand wrapped tightly around the rod trapping the line so that the fish could not take any more line from the rod, I slowly pulled the reel back up until I could get it onto the bank. Still holding on like grim death to the rod and line and putting the butt of the rod between my knees I struggled to get the reel back onto the rod. Another five minutes or so went by before I could net the as yet unseen fish, which turned out to be a stunning barbel, and compared to my dishevelled state it did not have a mark on it or a scale out of place.
I secured the reel by wrapping some tightly stretched adhesive tape around the reel seat and the cork handle and carried on to catch another 2 smaller barbel over the next 5 hours.The bait was worm. There and then I said that I would never again purchase a rod that did not have a screw reel seat.