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I walked along the river earlier in the day and it was so low it looked painful, I hoped there would have been some heavy rain but it didnt come. There were just a couple of small Chub in the weir and the gravel runs were only 5-6 inches deep, my heart sank as I thought there couldn't possibly be any decent sized fish around. Anyway I stuck to my guns and decided to do an 8pm-midnight session even choosing to miss the Euro 2008 final as I just wanted to try and had been waiting all week with that 'what if?' feeling I knew the football would take second place. So I heeded the advice of not being able to catch fish where you can't see them, but instead opting to try and catch them where although I still couldn't see them - this was only due to the fact that the water was too deep - so at least they might be there, a deep swim on a bend with some over hanging trees. A couple of small Chub on pellet confirmed that at least there were some fish around, I suspected the overhanging tree would hold Chub but would it be a Chub-only swim?
A few handfuls of Special Hemp later and bam! the rod keeled over and I just grabbed it in time, I felt resistance and then it eased slightly before firing up it's engines and heading upstream like a rocket, at this point I thought this must be a Barbel, but still thinking surely not, not this quickly, I had expected to have to maybe wait weeks or maybe months. After a few more diving runs I managed to steer it away from the snags and then got it upto the surface and saw it's whiskers, I was ecstatic.

I couldn't believe it, the first time of trying I caught my first Barbel, just short of 5lbs, they really do fight don't they - what an experience!
OK so it's not huge but they probably don't get too much bigger in this river as there aren't that many in there and they are only 7-8 years old.
If anyone thinks a 7-8 year old Barbel grows any bigger please let me know so I know what size I should be aiming for.
Thanks again for your advice and inspiration.

Of course, I shall be back again on Friday night to catch it's mother.

Robin.