The Mighty Trent 2016

The Mighty Trent is where i planned to do most of my fishing this season but the best made plans dont always work out. I have only done a handful of sessions due to other commitments so its been a disappointing year. the start of the season was in flood not the way i like the rivers, i know a lot of river anglers love it when its up and coloured but i have found these conditions hard to find the carp and to be honest i have never done very well in these conditions. Am not fussed about catching Barbel the main species am after is the Carp, i know there is some big old Barbel in the Trent and i would never turn my nose up to a good double as they do give a good account for themselves. I find the carp do fight a lot harder and longer then the Barbel pound for pound.
Me and good friend Colin plugged away at it and have both been rewarded for our efforts, we fish the same swim on one of the stretches which is a big peg with plenty of room allowing us to both get in on the action. The man in the up stream swim is the bait man he will put all the bait in his swim and up stream, the man in the down stream spot only baits the margin this allows both anglers to get some action. Usually the man down stream will end up having the hot swim but with only the man up stream baiting up this will allow the fish to pass by the man down stream to the baited area the man down stream is just trying to get a bite from fish passing through to the bait, we found this is the best way to fish when doubled up in a swim.

Colin was the first to get a bite and what a first bite to get, his first river Carp a lovely mid double Common. It was a real special moment and one i am proud to of been apart of. I did manage to get the camera rolling and record most of the battle and it really was a good battle as you can imagine, Colin was proper buzzing with his first river Carp capture. It was a couple more sessions before i got in on the action and slipped the net around a lovely little fully scaled Trent Carp, i also had a double figure Barbel shortly after.

I have to say that session was all down to Colin as he stayed up most of the night regularly baiting the swim up while i got my head down lol. Both takes came in the small hours and we thought there would be more to come but that was it for that session. Colin also had a lovely double figure Barbel on another session, we also had a few bream between us but surprisingly no Chub. I hope to get out more on the Trent in 2017 but i see most of my time being taken up by a new ticket i have which is mainly still waters.