sorry its been so long

I really should blog more but what with work,family, FB, twitter, more work and even more work I've just not had the time, not even been fishing that much.

I am on my annual end of season sorte darn sarf though couldn't miss that. I set off on Friday morning and met up with Pops, Waz and Oz for breakie (thanks Paul).
Now my last week is not usually troubled with catching any fish (last years brown trout pb being the exception!) let alone barbel but I did sneak one out on the Trent, a lovely 6lber, the highlight though was weighing Waz's pb on my new scales. Johno turned up a little later and he had a couple (his 1st barbel of the season after his constant blanking at "the trolleys").

A late drive (on empty motorways) down to Jan's in Eton and I fell into bed at 2am. I had breakfast with her and my brother in law and his wife, then saw them off to Heathrow for their flight to Las Vegas to celebrate Jon's 50th birthday.

Saturday all to my self, an interchange of txts with a good friend and excellent angler (you are a god!) saw him put me on the river Kennet just off the A4 fishing for perch. A couple of hours sat watching a hand made Andrew Field "perch bobber" with my Paul Johnson Mkv Avon and Chris Lythe (wide drum), made the day seem rather pleasant, sunny and 60 oF with a gentle sw breeze not bad for March.
The "bobber" never wavered apart from me casting it into the nice slack in front of me. Bait was a "lobbie head" and this stayed untouched until the light started to fade just a little when it bobbed and moved off upstream (always a sign of a good size perch), a robust rather than exciting fight ensued but I slipped the net under a nice looking fish. Earlier this season I'd had new pb and couldn't really remember how big it looked, as I rested it in the net, I thought this one looked a "goodun". Looking at her on the mat she did look rather portly and pushed the scales to a magnificent 4lbs 5ozs! After photographs and returning her to the depths of the river she swam straight under the submerged tree to my left to sit and sulk for a while.








Meeting up with Sir Tom today to fish the Loddon, I've still never had a Loddon barbel (Tom are you reading this!)