Paul Bailey was incredibly surprised to hook and land this barbel on a lure from a river in West Yorkshire.
He was fishing a Ned rig – a tactic that involves working a soft plastic pattern slowly along the deck – when he connected with the hard fighting ‘whiskers’.
“I’d landed two nice chub and a small pike on a black creature bait in the first 30 minutes of the session,” he told us. “Having flicked the lure downstream, close to the bank, I began the stop-start retrieve when something hit the lure hard. Initially, I thought it was a big pike, but it felt all wrong.
“It was a while before I caught sight of the fish, which rather shocked me. I didn’t weigh it, but I took a quick picture before returning it.”
THE BEST LURE RODS ARE PERFECT FOR TAMING ANY SPECIMEN
