Spanish Barbel on the Pellet

Regular spodding, a Korda wide Gape B Size 6 Barbless hook and a pellet tied lasso stlye, will do for me!

GRRrrr-Ripper would be the only way you could describe the screaming power runs which we sampled last weekend. One of the runs tore the line from my big pit reel at such a rate, we thought we were going to have to put the thing out with water!

Four of the 5 fish caught were torpedo’s, by that I mean Barbel, and what a joy they were. Although technically speaking we were actually fishing for Carp, it was no great shame to land these speeding missile like fish.

It’s not often I can honestly say I have converted 5 runs to 5 fish, but sometimes things go your way, and it was one of those sessions. Four of the torpedo’s fell to the Pellet fished lasso style, a style shown to me sometime ago by Gary Allen from The Bavarian Guiding Service. It’s no secret rig, but I must thank Gary for that one, it did the business no end.

The torpedo’s caught were no monsters, the best being just under 10lb. But all of the Barbel caught were upwards of 8lb. But I should not get lost in these Barbel, as I did also enjoy a Carp. This fish gave me and my fishing mate Raul a rude awakening in the night; talk about deep sleep, it was one of those moments when you have a rod-in-hand and your still not on this land. Sleep fishing would be a better way to describe it, and after the fish must have stripped 100m of line from me, I somehow managed to steer him into the landing net; he was not a big fish, more a typical for this water, weighing about 12-14lbs, but a fine and welcome addition.

But this was not a night for the Carp, it was a session for the Barbel, and while the moon gave us an inspired light, the Barbel kept munching our Pellet, and the hooks held them safe to our nets.