18lb 6oz barbel is a record on the River Dove
The seemingly endless run of huge barbel from rivers nation-wide has continued this week with a series of personal best fish hitting the bank topped by new River Dove record of 18lb 6oz.
Jim Ufton landed the specimen, which beat his old pb of 17lb 6oz and upped the venue best by 2oz, during a short evening session on the waterway.
The Staffordshire-based rod, who has held the river record on four different occasions, used a home-made boilie in conjunction with a simple feeder rig.
“I’m convinced that these pressured fish are spooked by constant casting so I literally pick the perfect spot, make one cast and leave it in the water for long as possible,” Jim told Angling Times.
“A lot of anglers on this stretch pile the bait in, but I had this fish by squeezing a few broken boilies into my feeder.”
Another angler to beat his personal best was Luke Ayling who slipped the net under a 16lb 10oz specimen from the River Thames.
Despite having to use a 4oz grippa lead in order to hold bottom and combat the constant stream of debris being flushed down the river, the Oxfordshire specialist put his faith in a paste-wrapped boilie alongside a PVA bag filled with pellets and crushed baits.
“I had to recast every 45 minutes as the lead was being dragged out of position, but the back lead I was using kept the hookbait free of rubbish and the paste that I moulded around the lead produced a strong scent trail in the water,” said Luke.
A home-made boilie lowered into the edge of a club stretch of the Dorset Stour proved the downfall of a 16lb 10oz specimen for Bob Edwards.
The fish set a new personal best the Lovedean, Hampshire-based rod who got his prize to the bank with a rig constructed from 12lb mainline and a size 8 Drennan Barbel hook.
Finally, Stewart Moss certainly had every reason to smile when he smashed his barbel pb by 13oz when he netted a superb 16lb 5oz fish from a midlands river.
The Drennan International employee used no free offerings and opted for a legered CC Moore Meteor boilie along with a PVA bag filled with pellets and 10mm boilies.
