An evening on the Lower Severn

The lower reaches of the River Severn have been something of an enigma for me. I first fished it for Barbel about 4 years ago and had one of the most uneventful sessions of my life. I am going to take you back to mid-September and with a few rumours of some form I thought it was time to try again. I had recently had an evening session and connected with and subsequently lost a very good Barbel. This gave me some confidence to try again and so I did, however with the river quite low compared to recent weeks and the sun shining I decided to opt for two small pellets as bait as opposed to meat and cast out over a bed of hemp and pellet. To be honest, I was not expecting much as most action tends to occur around dusk so I was a little surprised when my rod wrapped round and had me grappling to grab it. The fish steadily moved upstream before coming quite close without too much effort. However, it suddenly awoke and made some powerful runs before finally making it to the net. I instantly knew I'd managed a 'double' and the scales soon confirmed this with the fish weighing exactly 11lb. It was the only bite I managed that evening but that no longer mattered as it was the first double I've caught in a couple of seasons and represented some hard work and patience.