Barbel fishing on the Ouse near Bedford

For as long as I could remember, my other half Chris, had wanted to catch a barbel.

With this in mind in late July we had visited our local tackle shop and after seeking their advice we bought a club book some well stocked lakes, canals and a stretch of the Great Ouse just outside Bedford that was known to hold a good head of prime Barbel.

The prefered bait was to be a Dynamite Baits 10mm drilled halibut pellet attached by a hair rig with a paste made from crushed halibut pellet and fish oil moulded round the hair rigged pellet.

A few weeks previously we had seen a great deal of rain which had seen the river levels rise and throught the evident weed and mud in the trees lining the river, the level had fallen noticably by at least 3 foot.

The river was still running freely and was fairly coloured only allowing the occasional glimpse of weed obscuring the gravel bottom of the glide.

Before casting out I had made up a small pva mesh bag (no larger than a golf ball) which I had filled with a mixture of smaller halibut pellets. The hook I used was a size 8 Kamasan barbless which was nicked to the small pva bag in order to cast out which allowed for the free offerings to scatter near the hook when the pva bag melted.

The rod was then placed in a vertical position against a bank stick with a screwed in horizontal rod rest attached and my eyes began to careful scrutinise the soft quivertip to check for any evidence of the tentative attentions of a barbel.

After several nods on the rod tip which resulted in catching a few small chub the rod started to nod violently before whipping round and nearly being pulled from the rest. After a spirited fight my first barbel, a pristine specimen weighing 13lbs was on the unhooking mat.

Unfortunately, Chris failed to catch on that day, but a few days later we returned to the same stretch just before dawn and as we made our way towards the mist rolling river we followed in the tracks of a pair of scampering otters than ran past the weirpool and along the bank until they disappeared from sight.

Within a few moments of Chris casting in his rod which barely had chance of settling on its rest was rattled violently by the attentions of an Ouse barbel which weighed in at 8lb 6oz.

He had at last caught his quarry.