anglersmail.com 9 JULY | 17river where I spent my youth,
and back then I had absolutely
no idea that my dreams would
come true, and that I would turn
my hobby into a living, and so
the reminiscing began.
With a cuppa and a book, I
slowly sank into fond memories.
They didn’t contain many fish,
as I didn’t catch many, and a
barbel was a mythical beast
back then.
But the adventures have
remained in the old grey matter,
including the massive bike ride
from Whitmore Reans, when I
skived off school armed with a
telescopic rod, luncheon meat,
an Arlesey bomb (lose it and
the game was over), copious
amounts of Monster Munch, a
can of Quatro and a Wham bar.
Times were very different
then, nowhere near as romantic
as Izaak Walton’s days, of
course, but the quarry was the
same. I’d read a page, float back
to my youth, then read again,
trying to find similarities.
My musings would have beendifferent from Izaak’s, as the
barbel page would have gone
something like this...
“Daz boshed me on the head
with a catapult, so I lamped him
with a bankstick and the top
of the V came off. First chuck,
and all the line has gone round
the reel in a tangle. All Monster
Munch have gone, so we ate the
luncheon meat, realised we had
no other bait, and spent the rest
of the day skimming stones,
trying to kill each other with a
Whopper Dropper catapult, and
trying to catch minnows with
our hands. The end.”
Izaak’s words didn’t involve
three weeks of detention forskiving, or the burnt-out XR3i
round the back of the Avion
Centre.
He eloquently observed fish,
and often spoke about their
taste, their strength, guile and
appearance, all beautifully put.
“The barbel is so called by the
reason of his barbs, or wattles
at his mouth, which are under
his nose or chaps. He is one of
those leather-mouthed fishes
that I told you of, that does very
seldom break his hold if he
become once hooked: but he
is so strong, that he will often
break both rod or line if he
proves to be a big one.”
Things haven’t changed, as
they still have leathery mouths,they are still strong, and the
hook rarely pulls out of their
mouths. They haven’t evolved
much, although some of us
have.
It’s this simplicity and
romance that I’m heading to, in
a round about way, and no one
is more simple than my mate
Steve ‘The Gym’ Williams.
Steve knows the Severn well,
very well, and is the go-to geezer
when it comes to anything to do
with Middle Severn barbel. And
yet his methods are not space
age, as his success is borne of
trial and error, through time
spent, and spent well, observing.
Steve is that old, he actuallyused to fish with Izaak, or ‘Izzy’
as he called him, and you could
say his method is as old, but
very, very wise.
When I first set eyes on his big
meat (I’m talking about his bait,
you dirty-minded so and sos), I
didn’t quite get it.
A whole tin is the bait. If he
feels that the barbel might be on
the shy side, he will generously
cut the tin in half, and use one
half. That’s still a massive bait,
in my eyes. Just imagine that, a
piece of luncheon meat the size
of your palm.
Izaak wrote about ‘well-
scowered’ lobworms and ‘green
gentiles’, but we were throwing“ Izaak’s words didn’t
involve three weeks of
detention for skiving, or the
burnt-out XR3i round the back
of the Avion Centre.”
Continued over››
The big ones stayed low and slow.Over ‘9’ and a picture’s fine!