Tempting fate

I am making this blog entry purely as a marker. For the first time, since Loch Awe in May, I have the chance to spend an extended period on the bank. Still got a few, work related, issues - regarding holidays, but I am going to get a couple of full nights, on the river before I have to make any big decisions as to what I can, and can't, do from Monday to Friday.

5th July 2013 - Benno with the barbel that set the project off.
11lbs 6oz of Kentish Stour "gold"

So far this season, my sessions on the river have been short (3 - 4 hours) affairs and my results are not as I'd have hoped. I do, however, believe that some progress has been made and am, now, beginning to understand the barbel just a little more clearly. If this is true, then I am confident that I will add to my tally before 05.00 hrs Monday. Am I at the "glass ceiling"? or am I just kidding myself? Am I as good an angler as I think I am?

17th August 2013 - a bloody monster of a barbel
13lbs 5oz of, undeserved, River Stour magic.

I watched a Youtube video by Shaun Harrison (we used to fish Claydon together in the mid-80's) - under the Free Spirit banner - Barbel Angling. He talked of taking 20 doubles from a river by the end of September - bloody hell! We've only had nine between four of us in two seasons!
I don't know the river to which Shaun refers; but it ain't the Kentish Stour!

Young Mr Bradbury with a 7lbs 10oz fish
31st August 2013 - this river owes Tom a "double"; if such a thing is possible?

As for a return to Tring - it remains a possibility, but I'm still not sure that my heart is really in it. Twenty double figure barbel, from a single river, in one season - that has certainly given me something to think about!
It won't happen in 2014/15 but it is a project for the future, should I fail to get side tracked by other species.