James Betts

Field Tester

0

Hi all, its been a little while since my last report so here we go, with the UK river season starting on the 16th June my aim was to catch some river Carp which my local river has good numbers. However, in angling nothing is a certainty and 2 weeks of fishing evening sessions proved fruitless, catching just about everything but the Carp I wanted. Everything loves the Squid and Octopus range.

So with the Carp being very nomadic in the river system I turned my attention onto Barbel, and with Barbel loving spicy baits I chose Frankfurter Sausage 16mm boilies, matching pellets, and the groundbait, which is great for carrying food onto the river bed as it’s a very heavy mix which breaks down quickly.
So I set up in a faster area of river which looked good for Carp and Barbel, and out went a strong simple rig which included a lead clip and tubing, 8 inches of 12lb mono hooklink and square pear lead to hold in the flow. Baitwise, a single 16mm Frankfurter boilie wrapped in pellet paste, and a large mesh pva bag of Pellets, whole boilies 6 or more (it’s a great way of getting them onto the river bed) and bits of paste.
This approach worked brilliantly and later in the session a 8lb 6oz Barbel was on the bank and new PB was landed.

I returned and fished the same area again and used the same rig and bait as before with my confidence sky high I settled down into baiting using big PVA bags and gently dropping them into the flow. Two hours into the evening session a much larger fish picked up the hookbait and after a great fight a new PB was laying on the unhooking mat, 14lb, I was over the moon!

So four evenings passed and my confidence was off the scale, but I really was not prepared for what happened in this session. The weather was spot on, dull and cloudy but warm, so at 7pm I set up in the same area dropped the rig in and sat back and waited. Well I didn’t have to wait very long because within 15 minutes I was fighting a very angry fish which did it’s very best to not get landed. At first I though it maybe a river Carp as it went on a very long first run, when the fish came towards the net I saw a VERY large Barbel and I knew I had a new PB in the net. So with the fish carefully unhooked and put into the sling, the scales read 15lb 5oz and dream come true.

So what can I say? Two fish of a lifetime in 4 days. And they love the SBS Frankfurter Sausage Eurostar range.