Feedback & Reports

Fished from early to dusk, from the woods to the meadow but could only manage one take and unfortunately lost the fish to a snag. Fishing partner did much better with three lovely barbel.

3 Barbel

Second of two days on courtfield, our party was further reduced today to just the two rods. On arrival, the river looked a little bit friendlier than the day before, having dropped a little and also some of the colour seemed to be fading. We thought we were on for a cracking day, we were so wrong!! Having given it a few hours in legg meadow at the start of the day - just a small chub on trotted maggots to show, we then moved to the fallen tree swim in the woods in the hope of repeating the number of bites from the previous afternoon. I managed a take from a barbel on my first cast, but we then had to wait until about 5.30pm for any more action when we both took a chub each in quick succession. Despite this brightening our mood, the expected feeding spell never materialised and we were left scratching our heads a little, heading home a little crestfallen after three rather trying days.

3 Chub, 2 Other

Only three of the rods ended up fishing. We started in Legg Meadow in the upstream part. Conditions looked great, good flow and a consistent colour. However, in the morning we managed just one fish each, two eels and one chub. The chub and the eels were both PBs (though as first time captures they would be!)
At lunchtime, I walked most of the beat with one of the other rods to assess if a move might be in order. With the flow and the seemingly increasing amount of floating weed, we were having a few issues holding bottom in the meadow so when I found the swim with the huge fallen tree in the woods, it looked to me that it might be much easier to position a bait there in the edge of flow, which would mean that most of your line in the water would then be in the eddy and therefore avoiding the weed. I moved whilst the others stuck it out a while in the meadow. Four or five casts in, the rod hopped round and I struck in to a fish that, once landed, took the scales round to 10lbs 8oz. Delighted would be an understatement. Based on this success, and very much at my invitation, one of the other rods then joined me in the same swim to see if he could break his barbel duck. Unfortunately, despite doing everything right, he just couldn't get a bite. I did get three more resulting in one chub of about 4 pounds and 2 lost barbel where the hook-length parted on rocks (I think). Legg Meadow didn't produce any further fish. Surprisingly, by 5pm all the bites dried up and despite fishing through to dusk we didn't see any further action in the woods.

This was the first of two days booked.

1 Barbel, 2 Chub, 2 Other

1 barbel of 8lbs 4ozs caught near the top end of Legg Meadow. 2 barbel, 10lbs 2ozs & 6lbs and a chub of 4lbs 6ozs taken in the woods.

3 Barbel, 1 Chub

Same conditions, but better results. 4 barbel taken in the woods, 5lbs 11ozs, 6lbs 7ozs, 8lbs 4ozs and 9lbs 6ozs. 1 barbel, 9lbs 8ozs and a chub of 5lbs 4ozs caught near the top of Legg Meadow.

5 Barbel, 1 Chub

Conditions and results similar to those on Monday. 2 chub of 4lbs & 5lbs 2ozs caught in Legg Meadow and one good fish lost in the wood area on last cast.

2 Chub

River low and slow, fishing tough! 1 barbel around 6lbs and 2 chub, 4lbs 11ozs & 4lb 14ozs in the wood section late afternoon/evening provided some welcome action.

1 Barbel, 2 Chub

Enjoyable, sunny day in the deeper water at the top end. No action for the first few hours. Then an enforced siesta, due to the unrelenting canoe traffic between 11am and 3-30pm. However, a quieter evening produced 3 nice barbel to 7.5lb between 5pm and 7pm. All action on pellets.

3 Barbel

3 barbel from Legg Meadow to Elips pellet and feeder approach on a warm sunny day when bites were hard come by. 2 barbel in the 4-5 pounds range and a beauty of 8lb 5oz, taken on the last cast of the day, just as the light was fading.

3 Barbel

We lost a couple of barbel in the morning and was sure of some sort of action late afternoon evening, but they were our only bites. Not one other thing happened.