Barbel hotspot booked up till november!
The country's most prolific barbel pegs are fully booked for the first five months of the new season, Angling Times can exclusively reveal.
From June 16 to November 16, 2018, Pegs 1A to 10 on the River Trent at Cromwell Weir will be fished by anglers 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Collingham Angling Association runs the fishing here and has been inundated with bookings since before the start of the new year.
Speaking to Angling Times, the club’s head bailiff, Ky Morton, stated that the popularity of the stretch is down to the prospect of a turbine being built at Cromwell Weir.
He said: “The hydroelectric power company BARN Energy is currently in the process of obtaining planning permission to extract and build a turbine at Cromwell, and this will see an end to fishing on pegs 1A to 10.
“This plan is to be reviewed next year, so I’m not surprised we’ve taken so many bookings – anglers know that time could be running out to fish this stretch of the Trent.
“I know some people will be worried about the fish and think they’ll be too pressured, but it has always been busy at Cromwell on both our side and Ashfield AC’s bank – some years anglers used to wait behind pegs for them to become free!
“The barbel are very active below the weir and do move up and down the river, so I don’t feel they’re at risk of being harmed from this pressure.”
Top Trent angler Bob Roberts said: “I think it’s stupid to pressure these fish – there won’t be one day of rest, indeed even one hour of rest.
“BARN has issued that the weir is a designated spawning ground, and considering barbel spawn from May onwards they are going to suffer.
“Those fish will be hounded round the clock without mercy or relief by those who supposedly campaign about respect and fish care, about novices treating precious barbel without care, who criticise match anglers, invent codes, have unwritten rules of etiquette and shout from the rooftops about otters.
“Some are high-profile figures using this ‘commodity’ to inflate their profiles, egos and PBs – and I shall not be one of them. It just doesn’t sit comfortably with what I believe is a fair way to treat fish.”
Have your say:
What do you think about the Cromwell Weir peg bookings? Have your say by emailing kevin.wilmot@bauermedia.co.uk. We’ll print your views in our upcoming letters pages.