River Severn Arley Sunday 19/8/12

This weekend saw me on the river Severn at Arley for my first river session of the season with the Cradley lads, some of the lads had already fished the river a couple of times this season with the usual mixed reports of 3-4 guys catching and the rest struggling. I was looking forward to having a go on the river as I do each year as it is something different I know the weights are not what they used to be on the Severn or most rivers for that matter but I think it does you good to have a change now and then, don't get me wrong I love catching big weights of Carp from the pools but now and then its good to dust the cobwebs off the rods and do something different. After fishing the river for many years this match was booked on a stretch I had never fished before the Harbour water on the right bank of the river below the footbridge, this stretch used to be run by the pub of the same name until a couple of years ago when they gave it up and the B.A.A took it over. The river was carrying around 1ft of extra water with a nice tinge of colour so we were all looking forward to catching a few fish as I didn't know the water the draw didn't matter to me I was just going to go to my peg and fish it, when I drew peg 5 I was told I was just off the fliers 6&7 either side of the fence but I was going to give it a good go. My peg was just below a ford which looked to be moving a bit fast with the extra water on the apparent fliers below were a little steadier and with Baz Robson around 15yards below me it looked a out and out feeder job, I set up just two feeder rods as with Baz so close and the extra water the float would have been infront of him before it had settled. I set a pellet feeder and a caster & hemp job on the other both set ups were the same apart from the hooks one with a lasso for the pellet and the other a standard hook for the caster, both had 8lb maxima reel line to a 0.22 silstar hooklength the pellet hook was a Drennan size 14 Super Specalist Barbel the caster hook was a 14 standard Super Specalist. I started the match on the pellet cast to the middle of the river which I had to use 2oz of lead to hold with a mix of 3&4mm halibut pellets in the feeder with a 8mm on the hook, I cast out 6-7 times in the first 10mins to put a bit of a bed down then sat back and waited. It was after around 50mins into the match before I had my first bite a nice dropback before the tip pulled forward and I was hooked into my first Barbel of the season, it gave a good account of itself before I netted it and at around 4lb it was a nice start. It was around15mins later when I had bite no2 which turned out to be another Barbel of around the same size, it looked like being a good day with 2 barbel in the sack and Baz below not hooking one yet. Barbel no3 was hooked and landed after 1 1/2 hours which was maybe closer to 5lb it was looking good as the word along the bank was that no one else was catching yet, another hour went by without a bite so I switched to the caster to see if it would spur another barbel or Chub into feeding but after around 45mins and only 2 small 2oz Dace to show I went back to the pellet. There were a couple of the lads walking around saying that no one was catching it was fishing very hard, after that early run of fish I failed to get another bite for the rest of the match despite castig around, rolling the feeder & trying different size hook pellets my match was over in the first 1 1/2 hours! My 3 Barbel & 2 Dace gave me 13lb 4oz, Baz below me had 4lb odd of bits but no Barbel and Mick on the other flier failed to weigh. Steve Robson had 1 Barbel for 5lb odd and JB had one small Barbel below Steve. There had been only 5 Barbel caught in the whole match luckily I had 3 of them which gave me my 7th Cradley Heath Club match win on the bounce, I don't know what I am doing latley but I which I could bottle it!!!! The match had been realy hard for most and over a pint outside the Harbour Inn there was talk of not booking the middle Severn again as it seems to get harder each year.