On the blob !

I love rivers , in fact I caught my 1st sanitary towel on a river a . I don't know what it is about my local rivers but they are teeming with them (much to the disgust of an aeronautical friend of mine ), anything hair rigged seems to work . A couple of foot of flood water always seems to get them moving ,in fact many a barbel swim on the river Don has been spoiled by a shoal of jam rags . They aren't solely confined to the Don either , infact I caught one today on the Dearne . I don't know much about them as a species other than they must be some sort of flat fish  , their fighting qualities are poor but I reckon a good match angler ( or Adi Berner ) could put weight together quite easily in the right conditions . How long before commercial fishery owners cotton on to this and fill their stew ponds with them ?

I much prefer catching barbel and chub , which are rather more pleasant to unhook . Stupidly that was my aim this morning , but there was just too much crap coming down to keep even 6oz of lead in place for longer than 5 minutes . Releasing my third ladies hankerchief of the morning was the final straw , I packed up feeling that I would be much better coming back on monday or tuesday .

Before I go on I will say that any barbel that appear on this blog will be more than likely to have been caught on the Don or the Dearne , I make no apologies for admitting that . I can't be arsed with calling it a tiny local river or some other name in a vain attempt to hide its identity . Everyone knows that these two rivers contain barbel , but I won't say where I caught them . Guess where I caught the one in the photo ? I bet the background gives it away ......