Decided to go ultra light with my prestons 15/17 carbon active and just one bottom rod, choice being the lighter top on my drennan specialist power barbel in case i got the opportunity to bottom fish.
Set the float up first as i was intending to fish a narrow channel a third of the way across the river, and i wanted to really get the method for slow-trotting small baits down to a fine art . . . .
Loose fed casters and hemp for half an hour or so while setting up on the bank to get the swim going before actually wetting a line - always a good ploy to get the fishes confidence up first. The bites came within minutes of running a 3 swan Maver commercial waggler down - i'd chose this type of float against a stick or bolognese as it proved to be superior for 'holding back' in the very fast water.
I was also tooled up with the new Fox Eyed Barbless hooks that have recently come out, as on first impressions they looked good; they later let me down badly which spurred me on to try these new korum hooks . . . . .
The fox hooks were a nice short shank and strong looking, slightly inturned point which i hadn't tried for a while, so they looked - 'worth a go'.
I lost the first two fish . . . . . second one felt a good 'un, landed the third, lost the fourth, landed an eel, lost the fifth and so on . . . . . till it was 4 fish to me, and four lost barbel to the Ribble . . . .
Now the hooks were barbless, so i wasn't concerned that hooks would be left in the barbels mouths, which they weren't as all four lost fish just 'dropped off ' at various stages from the strike to 5 mins into the fight....
personally, i put it down to the combination of a very short shank and the inturned point, the fish were all very lightly hooked in the lips and i think the leverage they get in such fast water meant the point would just not stay in deep enough to see the fight out.
That's when i tried these . . . . . . . . . . . . .
One thing i wasn't going to do was pick some more hooks with an inturned point, and its suprising how many there are when you look - definitely had to be a straight point next time around !
First impressions were good, perfectly straight point, and a nice long point too which i think is essential in a barbless hook - trying to prize one apart with my fingers, i noticed straight away that you can feel the carbon steel resisting my best efforts to open it up by hand . . . . .
Tasty ! These were gonna do !
Next trip out i was back on the same peg to put my mind at rest, same setup, different hooks - one of the things i also noted with these is that for this session i only used the one hook, as against four fox on my last trip - they just seemed to blunt so easy . . . . . . . so into the swim i went with 5 casters impaled on a 12's.
First fish came within minutes two rod lengths down the swim, hitting into these barbel in a narrow, 8 foot wide by 3 foot deep channel, can be seriously scary when they realise they're hooked, the power is immense ! The carbon active swung round into full curve and off she went - if anything was gonna give, it'd be now !
3 mins later, she's in the net - only a small fish but first hit and no hook pull !
20 mins later i'm into another far more powerfull fish, using the rivers flow to its full advantage . . . . . one minute - two minutes go by and i'm forgetting about whether the hooks gonna pull already . . . . after 5 min's, she's also gracing my landing net !
Weighing in at just over 6 and a half pounds, this fish really did put my gear to the test let me tell ya ! Every heart stopping lunge did my nerves no good at all but what a scrap and it's two out of two to me !
With the light fading i knew i wouldn't get much longer out of this session (this was a spur of the moment - after work quickie) but i carried on trotting and holding back every now and again to tease the barbel into feeding . . . . . right down the end of the run is where they normally like to lye in wait so it was there i held back the longest - at this point i can hardly see the float which is now 30 yards away in fading light, but i could feel the knocks to the rod tip, which is exactly what i got as the tip belted round as it hit my tight line - straight into the top section !
Again no monster but it took near five minutes to get this fish in as it had a 30 yard fast flowing run of pounding water advantage over me !
Weighing in at 4 and a half pounds it had to be the last fish of the evening so i quite happily packed up, safe in the knowledge that i had found a solution for this particular swim, and a new pattern of hooks that will be my first choice now for any swim like this i come across.
Take at look here for more technical detail on them . . . . . .
Korum New KM-01 Hooks
