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A very special fish for me,pity about the photo

Mark Swaby

Mark Swaby

Senior Member
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Back in 1982 i caught my first double from the Royalty fishery,it then took me over 10 years and lots of 9lb fish to get another double,from the Bristol Avon.A week later on my home river the Colne i caught another.In those days there were few barbel in the Colne and to me it was a special fish,most of these Barbel came from illegal stockings from the Kennet,brought back in canvas buckets and plastic bags in the back of cars.I found out that my fish had probably been stocked by Clive young, the tackle dealer from wealdstone ,about 10 years before,i took a photo of my fish into his shop and thanked him,he confirmed he stocked them about 50 yds away from where i caught that fish.A couple of years ago i wondered how many doubles i had caught and on going over records found i was on 193.Over the last few years i really only dabbled with Barbel fishing so the total this season was on 199 with 49 of those fish coming from the Colne.I thought i ought to make my 200th double be a Colne fish.Last week after a 5 year lapse i rejoined a Colne club and fished the same section that i caught that first Colne double.After a few sessions on the water fishing other swims and catching fish i thought why not try the swim i had caught that first fish from.lowering the bait over the edge 10 minutes went by and this fish pulled the rod round 11lb 5 oz,My 200th double and my 50th Colne double all in one fish,pity about the blue plastic bag in the background.
 
That's a great achievement Mark and a lovely story, well done mate.
I guess we could start a thread on iffy barbel stockings that have occurred over the years, not the sort of thing that is usually well documented though !;)
Ps when I first looked at the pic. I thought the ' blue bag ' was your fancy fishing hat that had just blown off in the breeze!:D
 
Lovely story, and an interesting account of numbers of doubles caught Mark, a great achievement.

I have never kept records of any sort, don't photograph a lot of my fish, and have absolutely no idea how many I have caught. However, it wouldn't be anything like your tally. Hardly surprising though, because (A) I am a cr*p angler, and (B) your count of doubles caught is about four times the total number of times I have gone fishing in the five or so years I have been fishing for barbel......seriously :D

Well done mate, we really must meet up down our river one day.

Cheers, Dave.
 
Great story Mark and a fitting way to end that chapter.

You got a few more I know :D
 
Fantastic achievement Mark! Great to read this :)
 
Is the bag now hiding behind that bit of chair that's miraculously appeared?
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Nigel, you don't live in County Durham do you (where the police have just said that you can grow cannabis for your own consumption!)? Have a look at the first post in the thread...
 
Anthony Pearson said:
Nigel, you don't live in County Durham do you (where the police have just said that you can grow cannabis for your own consumption!)? Have a look at the first post in the thread...
Click to expand...

I could ask you the same question Anthony, I was jokingly pointing out that when you photoshopped the undergrowth over the bag you had included the horizontal bar from the chair on the left! :D
 
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