If you thought that was a lot of fuss... this one caused a riot today..

[oscar]

I posted a pic of Mr O's mate last week who had caught an almost record breaking Barbel.
This morning, he beat his personal best and landed this magnificent beast from a secret location on the River Avon in Bristol early this morning. It has beaten the last one by 2lb and the celebrations will go on long into the night.
A Fantastic catch that Mr O is extremely jealous over. Click to enlarge pic.

[Odie]

wow!

huge fish!

[spot]

You might wonder what they're doing around this neck of the country at all - barbels are the ones which nibble the hairier bits between the legs of hippopotami if I recall correctly what David Attenborough was going on about last week. And the Avon's notoriously as muddy a wallow as even the most critical hippo could hope for.

He didn't get it up the feeder did he?

[Kathy Ellen]

Weeedoggie Oscar...that's one big fish. Did he throw it back?

[oscar]

Originally Posted by spot

You might wonder what they're doing around this neck of the country at all - barbels are the ones which nibble the hairier bits between the legs of hippopotami if I recall correctly what David Attenborough was going on about last week. And the Avon's notoriously as muddy a wallow as even the most critical hippo could hope for.

He didn't get it up the feeder did he?

The exact location is the Barbel hunters secrets that they would take to the grave. On the Barbel forum where they post, great effort goes into the pics so they can not be Identified by area. One newbie had a pic deleted by the mods because he had a particular tree in the pic that the hunters could Identify the swim by.
Barbel allegedly do nibble around the Hairier parts of a hippo because they eat their poo. I've seen a few otters in the river this summer but not spoted a hippo as yet.
Barbel are apparently thin on the ground in the Avon these days, hence the secrecy of location and the excitement of landing such a beautiful specimen.

[oscar]

Originally Posted by Kathy Ellen

Weeedoggie Oscar...that's one big fish. Did he throw it back?

It is Illegal to kill them here Kathy also there are many rules and regs about how long they can be out of the water etc. They are lovingly returned to the water asap.