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I had a strange experience when fishing on the Teme the other week and wondered if anyone had experienced similar in the past. I was fishing the back of a tree at Martley in a slower deeper section of river. The tree was slightly upstream of me and I cast to the back of it using a 1 1/2oz lead which held well in the current, I did not leave much if any bow in the line and pointed the rod sky wards at around 55 degrees. As I was reaching for my bait bag with the intention of firing afew elips around into the swim my attention was distracted by the rod tip vibrating continuously as if the lead was being moved along the bottom. Not having fished upstream very much before I reasoned that this could be a bite although it had happened quite quickly and struck. I immediately felt solid resistance but there was no mad dash as you usually get with barbel and whatever I had hooked swam ponderously down stream until it was level with me. I tried lifting my rod and could not move the object from the bottom. Again it swam very slowly and deliberately into mid river still on the bottom. At this stage the fish weeded itself as I felt that grating sensation that you often get through the line. Despite giving constant pressure for a little while absolutely nothing was moving. I decided to put the rod down and disengaged the bait runner for a while. After about 30-45 seconds the bait runner strated clicking and the fish moved off upstream. I gave it a few seconds and wound back down ito what felt direct contact but again could not move the fish off the bottom. Everything seemed to happen so slowly, no mad dash or panic and after a few moments the fish appeared to weed itself again. At this point I did feel a few small kicks on the rod but everything went solid again. I decided to play the waiting game to see if the fish would move. I could see my line on top of the water but nothing moved. After a minute or so I tried to resume the fight. I felt a feww kicks again but this time more purposeful as the fish moved off. Unfortunately I could also feel that dreaded feeling of the line grating against something more sustantial than weed. The line snapped and on retrieval was frayed to kingdom come for the lower 3-4 feet. I was obviously not happy at losing the fish or leaving a hook length in its mouth but perplexed at the manner of the fight. Could it have been a really big barbel, possibly a stray carp. I have caught many of both species in the past but never experienced anything like this. Any one any ideas or similar experiences. I've heard that really big fish can be hard to get off the bottom and have caught barbel to just under 10lb and carp to 19lb but nothing I have ever hooked before behaved like this fish. Rod was 1lb 12oz t/c Peregrine by the way.