Phil Spinks - August Rudd & Barbel

This entry was posted on 9th September, 2018

It’s now the beginning of September as I’m sat typing this and I’m feeling rather pleased with the way my summer fishing continued the year.

When I last wrote about my fishing I was in full rudd fishing mode and came very close to the magic 3lb mark, catching numerous Fenland rudd, including fish of 2-13, 2-14 and 2-15.

Since then the weather got hotter and hotter, with several days seeing 30c temperatures. This type of weather is normally absolutely rubbish for fishing apart from if you're targeting big rudd on the surface.

A few more trips to the fens were planned as I felt so close to a fenland 3lber. Several more stunning rudd over 2lb saw the bottom of my landing net.



Then one Sunday evening, very much a spur of the moment trip, I finally got my Fenland 3lb rudd. The weather was far from ideal to be honest, it was very windy, which can make presentation much more difficult when fishing floating crust.

I had been for a family meal and when I arrived back home late afternoon the rudd were calling me! It’s a 130 odd mile round trip for me to get to the Fens but as ever my enthusiasm was high.

Apart from a couple of small rudd I only managed to get one decent fish taking bread crust that evening, but it was well worth the effort as the third piece of crust it slurped off the surface had my size 10 hook in it.

After a tense battle amongst the lilies and cabbages I was soon holding up a new pb for a couple of quick self takes at 3lb 2oz. To say I was happy was a huge understatement.





Not long after the big rudd the weather started to cool down and a few days of heavy rain came. I had a week's holiday booked at the end of August so I decided to head up the A17 to the Trent to try and find a barbel or two.

The river was still surprisingly clear, although we had a fair bit of rain. I used my bait dropper to bait up a nice gravelly deep run close in. Seven or eight droppers full of hemp, micro pellets, and boilies were dropped. With attention to detail always being important to my style of fishing I scaled my presentation down slightly to suit conditions. A single 12mm boilie hair rigged on a size 12 hook with 4 foot long hook links of 8lb mono. Simple running rigs with 3 or 4oz feeders packed with groundbait.



Two or three hours passed and apart from the odd rattle nothing had happened. Then in true barbel fishing style at around 7pm the right hand rod folded in half and the reel exploded! I think the bite is my favourite part of barbel fishing.

A nice hard fighting barbel of around 8-9lb was soon being unhooked in the net for a quick, stress free release.



The second bite wasn’t long coming, and as long as I kept topping the swim up with bait after each fish or two the bites kept coming. I finally decided sleep was needed around 2am and was more than pleased with eight nice barbel, the best weighing 12lb 5oz. A return trip later that week saw several rod wrenching bites and a few more nice fish to just over 10lb.



I’m now thinking about perch as Autumn approaches, and I’m looking forward to what might be ahead.