January
A great start to the year, landing chub and pike regularly, beating both p.b’s
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| A new p.b of 5lb |
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| 19lb 2oz, getting closer to that elusive 20! |
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| Four nice chub from five casts, caught on the same night as my first '6' |
February
No significant captures during February, a struggle compared to the previous month, average chub and jacks was as good as it got.
March
5 Pike to low doubles, chub to 6lb 3oz from my local, also a new venue best of 5lb from a smaller river.
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| 6lb 3oz caught during a pike session on a flooded river |
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| 2 of 3 chub caught on the last evening of the season, the largest going just over 5lb, my best from this river. |
April
No fishing ! Plenty of work and a stag do in Lisbon.
May
Best man duties at Ben’s wedding, a family holiday to Lanzarote and one eel blank.
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| Half a day trolling, without any interest, which I've found is pretty standard when fishing tourist spots. |
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| Plenty of these whilst bottom fishing |
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| I also had a few different species whilst shore fishing, nothing of size but good fun. |
June
A days holiday for opening day, a single 4lb+ chub for my efforts during a red hot day on a very low river. More chub and a few small barbel towards the end of the month.
July
A few blanks on short sessions locally and a hectic first trip to the tidal Trent.
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| A 9lb 4oz fish caught within 10mins of arriving |
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| Two doubles caught in consecutive casts |
Back on my local waters with a river p.b barbel of 9lb, then a first visit to the Wye with a short stop over on the Warwickshire Avon.
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| My best from this river, exactly 9lb |
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| One of 8 barbel I landed on the Wye trip |
September
Chasing barbel locally, fish to 7lb, chub to 4lb + and a jack on my first pike outing of the the season.
October
Another trip to the Trent, a flying visit this time, a 2.5hr drive for only a 12hr session. Targeting barbel locally was becoming more difficult, only one local fish landed during a flood. A nice 12lb pike caught on a short pre-work session, my first double of the season.
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| Trent doubles |
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| Ben with a solid Trent fish, we both thought it would easily be 13lb but it 'only' went 12.02lb, a couple of ounces short of Ben's p.b |
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| My first double of the season, 12lb from my local river. |
November
A bit of a struggle both for time on the bank and results, a jack, a 3lb (ish) chub and a blank during my 3 sessions this month.
December
Two sessions in December. A first session on a Lincolnshire river which took 3hrs to get there due to the winter weather. Only two jacks landed, but two locals I had bumped into had both blanked so I classed it as a decent result. I’ll be revisiting again, hopefully before the season ends.
A session on my local river which was full of snow melt (water temp of 0.5°) and a lost fish, maybe a double. I was gutted at the time as I’ve never caught in water that cold.
No fishing over the Xmas period as I was laid up with Aussie flu, then had a wisdom tooth removed, not a great end to the year.
2017 highlights
Barbel - 11lb 1oz
Bream - d.n.w
Chub - 6lb 6oz*
Dace - d.n.w
Eel - 1lb 8oz
Perch - d.n.w
Pike - 19lb 2oz*
* personal best
A mixed year with some good results at times. Often a struggle to spend as much time on the bank as I would like, I had around 40 sessions but the vast majority of these were short 2/3 hours sessions usually during the least productive times of day (in between school runs!). However I did achieve one of my targets of catching a double figure barbel from a new river, although the Trent is probably the easiest river to catch a double from, it’s still one ticked off the list.
Six pound chub are very rare on my local river, many a dedicated chub angler haven’t seen one, so catching two in a season was great. Large chub are such an impressive fish, they have definitely moved up a few places in my favourite species list.
Trips to the Trent and Wye were brilliant, plenty of fish, plenty of laughs and plenty of memories, I’ll try and put a post up about these at some point.
Highlight of the year was my p.b pike, 2 double takes in 20 minutes, with last fish being the largest. The best 20 minutes of my angling year.
After recovering from that flu I’ve been out a couple of times this year, hopefully I’ll get the time to put something up before 2019!
Like the little and large pike pics!!
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