There’s been an interesting thread on the Barbel Fishing World website over the last few days (late July), when several anglers have been asking advice on the fundamentals of barbel angling to get more consistency in their catches, particularly with relevance to bigger-than-average fish. The discussion has encompassed the differences in approach where you can see fish and where you can’t, barbel bites, pre-baiting for bigger fish, the significance of bait size, how techniques vary between big and small rivers, feature fishing, how to cast accurately to far bank features, how to avoid nuisance fish and so on.

What has been very obvious is that a lot of possibly more inexperienced and certainly younger anglers are desperately trying to get their heads round the problems involved. Because there are so many potentially confusing subsections to each individual topic, I thought it would be useful to cover the subject as thoroughly as possible within the space constraints allowed. So, here goes.

The first point to make is that the obvious first way of learning about barbel behaviour is to be able to actually observe them in the river. So let us look at the lessons to be learned about barbel habits and feeding behaviour through patient observation. This is vitally important. Once you have a good working knowledge of how barbel react under certain circumstances, you can prepare swims with a mental image of what is probably occurring, even if the swim is too deep or murky for actual visual confirmation.

Observation
One of the most well known traits of barbel is the typically savage, lunging bite, and you only have to watch the feeding behaviour of a group of barbel to realise what actually causes this phenomenon. The pattern is always the same. If fish are working upstream over a bed of bait, hemp for instance, and come across a larger morsel of food, they invariably turn downstream with it before returning at the rear of the group. This turn downstream is usually very abrupt, often with a powerful flick of the tail. This accounts for the sudden, strong pull to hookbaits. I have read that this sudden turn is associated with nervous fish, but I simply cannot agree. It is a perfectly natural response to finding a juicy titbit, just as a sparrow will take a particularly succulent morsel of bread to the nearest branch to eat in peace.

When the only bait available is particle based, however, barbel often continue browsing, slowly working upstream as they do so, without the turn downstream. This allows us to make reasoned choices about terminal rigs for whatever bait is being employed. For instance, if I am using a big bait in conjunction with a hooklink of around twelve inches, there is no need to use a lead heavier than the demands of the flow. With large specials, you will still get a good thump even on a light lead, when a barbel finds the big bait and turns downstream with it. This is an important point. I’ve read derogatory comments about the so-called bolt rig approach to barbel fishing with large baits. I do not use a fixed bolt rig. My standard rig incorporates a sliding link, with leads from half an ounce to two ounces, depending on the flow. If, however, I am presenting a couple of maggots on a bed of hemp, the hooklink will be reduced to around four inches. The terminal rig will then normally incorporate a 2oz blockend feeder, though still fished on a sliding link. This amendment ensures that the barbel quickly feels the resistance, and this encourages the turn downstream with the bait when it otherwise might not have done so. Understanding this differentiation in behaviour between big and small baits, we can now see that a long hooklink in conjunction with a particle bait will be prone to give apparently finicky bites, with a high possibility of deep hooking. Some years ago, I had quite a heated discussion with my old mate John Bailey on this topic. John had mentioned very finicky bites from barbel, which had barely moved a quivertip, and yet at the same time said that he had sometimes been bitten off when striking at these tiny indications. My stance was that if a barbel had taken a bait far enough down to give a bite-off, that could not be called a finicky bite by any stretch of the imagination. It is simply poor bite indication with an over-long hooklink. 

Another factor with the long hooklink, particle bed scenario is the vastly increased risk of line bites. On the website thread I mentioned, one angler was saying that he was missing bite after bite from barbel, varying from tiny plucks to quite good thumps, and he had assumed that the fish were very cute. I believe the answer is far simpler. He was striking at liners, and the more he struck and missed the more he was spooking the fish.

It is also interesting, in the particle bait approach, how hook links below about four inches become ineffective for barbel. The hooklink is effectively a hinge between lead and bait, and if this hinge is too short, the turning motion, as the fish feels the resistance of the lead or feeder, pulls the bait out of the fish’s mouth. Similarly, when using a hair mounted bait, too long a hair results in missed bites or broken hairs, because the barbel has turned downstream with the bait in its lips but not the hook. Careful observation soon confirms why barbel feeding behaviour renders the hair rig with the bait no more than a quarter inch from the hook bend the most effective combination.

Feeding and pre-baiting
This is a topic that continues to attract tremendous discussion. One of the main interests, and where the bulk of the questions are aimed in my direction, is the use of progressive baiting to increase the chances of taking the biggest barbel in a group. Let’s look first of all at feeding behaviour I have observed in clear, shallow stretches of the Ouse, Cherwell and Wensum. The first trait I have established over many hundreds of hours of barbel watching is their habit of commuting in and out of baited swims, even when undisturbed. This follows a predictable pattern. When a group of fish first come across a freshly baited swim, they will feed for a few minutes before their suspicions are aroused and then leave. If nothing untoward occurs, they will generally be back within twenty minutes, and have another little feed, before leaving again. This behaviour continues indefinitely, but the longer you wait before fishing, the longer each feeding spell becomes and the shorter the intervals between vacating and re-entering the swim. After two hours, providing there is still feed in the swim, the swim will rarely be devoid of barbel for more than ten minutes.

You will notice, as time elapses in a baited swim, that the biggest fish will gradually assert its feeding dominance over its lesser companions. That’s why it is the biggest fish! Initially, however, this fish is likely to be the most wary. What this tells us is that introducing a bait to a group of barbel prematurely increases the odds enormously against taking the largest fish. Conversely, by waiting until feeding dominance has been established, you can almost guarantee that the first bite will result in the largest barbel present. Trefor and I have proved that over and over again. Another vitally important factor is that the dominant fish is almost always the first to re-enter a swim after its temporary absence.

Bullying tendency
Another aspect of feeding dominance is the bullying tendency of barbel over other species, with the exception of big bream and chub. A recently baited swim may contain a diversity of species feeding, from hordes of minnows to small roach, dace and chublets, up to bigger silver fish. As the barbel feeding frenzy gathers pace, most of the smaller fish are muscled out of the way. Many times on the Cherwell in particular, I was able to observe at very close quarters how all the small fish over the bait bed would depart the scene as soon as a big barbel made an appearance. So this provided another invaluable snippet of information. Now, when I am experiencing little knocks, bumps and trembles in a barbel swim, which I have attributed to small fish, I sit back and relax. If those indications suddenly stop, however, I take greater interest. Now is the time to switch to red alert. Every single Cherwell barbel I caught on bunches of maggots or casters came a few minutes after the sudden cessation of the attentions of nuisance fish.

Being able to study the underwater geography of a swim in clear water gives further valuable clues in the search for the biggest barbel in a group. On the Cherwell, one of the most reliable swims was a gravel patch clearing amongst lilies and patient observation over several hours revealed that the barbel always entered and left the swim by the same route, a clearing a few inches wide to the right of the cabbages.. On both sides of this clearing were dense lily roots. When I had waded that swim I’d found that narrow channel about six inches deeper than the surrounding bed. Another interesting fact was that the barbel always entered the swim though that channel in single file. 

It quickly occurred to me that I could incorporate this knowledge with the proven feeding dominance of the biggest barbel present. As I’ve said earlier, the dominant barbel is usually the first to return to a vacated swim. I now knew that I could virtually guarantee success with the biggest barbel present, by waiting until the swim was unoccupied and then accurately placing a hookbait right in the mouth of the channel. My one time Cherwell record of 12lb 5oz was taken on a bunch of casters employing just this technique.

Much of the website discussion centred round how this targeting of the biggest fish could be applied to big rivers like the Trent or Severn. If we look at one of the most important aspects of the progressive feeding technique, that of having free feed in the swim at all times, we can immediately see the main drawback of the technique when applied to swims where there may be dozens of fish rather than a small group. While the progressive approach would definitely work in principle, it would be totally impractical in practice, as the quantity of bait needed would be enormous. It therefore follows that, where the baiting is carried out over several hours to allay suspicion, which is still valid on bigger rivers, the biggest fish may not be first to the bait. All you can do is catch as many barbel as possible and hope the biggie is among them. One of the anglers on the site mentions the aspect of trusting to luck with the biggest fish on big rivers, and that sums it up rather well.

Pyramid scheme?
As a natural progression to that, I have been asked how I would go about specifically targeting the bigger fish on a big river like the Severn. My answer was simply to use bigger baits, and I was gratified to find that advice was confirmed by a few anglers who have taken that approach and found their average size barbel to be significantly larger than friends employing more normal tactics. What this did lead on to, though, gave me misgivings. A discussion developed about utilising the pyramid baiting theory employed widely in carp circles some years ago. Apparently, two anglers have been baiting a 100 yard stretch of river, introducing bait every two nights for at least two months, and the quantity of bait used has been, to quote one poster, “of biblical proportions”. Another post made mention of sixty gallons of bait introduced in a month. Now these are serious amounts of feed and while the anglers are doing nothing illegal, it does beg the question as whether the approach is fair to other anglers. If you have a water to yourself, fair enough, but what was very significant about the posts I mentioned was that one of the anglers commented on the difficulty of introducing the bait secretly, because of other anglers fishing the stretch. In a previous feature, I mentioned that Matthew and I had learned much about the efficiency of designer specials in 1998 when we pre-baited a stretch of the Ouse but not, I hasten to add, with bait in “biblical proportions”. We did, however, use enough for other anglers on the stretch to have very poor results that season. In hindsight, I do not feel comfortable with that. 

This is a topic that is raising a lot of hot air at the moment. At the recent Barbel Society annual conference, Trefor made an impassioned plea for moderation and common sense in the matter of mass baiting rivers. There is a fine line to be drawn here. On the one hand, those engaging in mass baiting can say, with some justification, that everyone else has the same opportunity to do the same thing. On the other hand, many others simply cannot afford the money or time to carry out pyramid baiting and are therefore severely handicapped. Where I stand is that I cannot see any valid objection to modest baiting in the way I have often outlined in my writing. But I do feel that secretive mass baiting with colossal amounts of expensive bait over months could possibly be crossing the line and lead to alienation and division within the ranks of barbel anglers.

Avoiding nuisance fish
The Ouse and Cherwell have also provided me with one other fascinating fact about barbel, in those two rivers at least. Both rivers have a good head of bream, to almost double figures, and the bream shoals show themselves quite readily, as they have a habit of swimming high in the water. For reasons that are certainly unclear to me, whenever I have observed a shoal of bream, I have also found a group of barbel in close proximity, often right under the bream.  This is something to bear in mind when you are having problems spotting barbel because of poor visibility or over deeper water. 

If that is a positive aspect of bream, the negative aspect is obviously small to average fish being a pain and taking baits intended for worthier quarry. This is one area where larger baits certainly do have a part to play. In my fishing with designer specials over the last few years for chub and barbel in rivers, and for carp in pits, the number of bream taken has fallen dramatically the larger the hook bait. For instance, on the Ouse, if I use baits in the 12mm-16mm range, bream can be a nightmare. Increase that to 20mm and the bream bites go down by 90%. The same was found on a bream infested carp pit in 2003. Because we were aware of the bream presence, Matthew and I went in with 24mm baits and caught precisely three bream between us in a summer. Others using 14mm and 16mm baits were driven to distraction by 3lb to 5lb snotties!
The other fish that seem resistant to bullying by barbel are big chub, and these can be a pain, taking carefully placed baits intended for barbel. In the case of chub, of course, bait size is no deterrent.

However, observation on both the Ouse and Cherwell has shown that yellow sweet corn is a great bait to achieve segregation of the two species. Barbel on those rivers do not seem keen on feeding over dense beds of corn. They seem distinctly nervous, whereas chub feed ravenously and you simply can’t give them too much. So, where I have a significant chub problem, and the chub are not big enough for them to be a worthwhile quarry in their own right, I bait two areas a few yards apart. The bait in one area will be hemp plus loads of corn, whereas the other area will be prepared with hemp plus just a few corn grains per dropper load of hemp.  While it is rare to achieve perfect segregation, I have often noticed as many as 90% of the chub migrate to the corn banquet, leaving the barbel to feed in peace and the odds of catching one obviously enhanced enormously. Having said that, the chub on the Ouse are now reaching serious sizes and I no longer bother with attempting segregation when using pastes or boilies. A seven pound bonus chub is welcome on my barbel rig at any time!

Catching area
The final topic was that of the best way to tackle barbel that live in dense snags, and how the pre-baiting or loose feeding technique should be amended. When we wrote Quest for Barbel, Trefor and I spoke of “holding spots”, where barbel make their homes, and a snag is the most classic such holding spot. Where there is high risk of breakage or a potentially tethered fish, I prepare a ‘catching area’ away from the snag, which will generally be at least five yards upstream. The ideal scenario is a small clearing over gravel and if there isn’t one existing naturally I create one. It is important to realise that there is absolutely no necessity for fishing in the dangerous snag.

When progressively preparing barbel swims, keep in mind that you can educate the barbel to feed where you want them to feed. If you continually place the bait in your selected catching area, the barbel will eventually colonise it, once they have overcome natural caution. I have mentioned selected catching areas in previous features, in discussing baiting spots exactly one rod length from the near bank. This aids accurate bait placement and, by implication, increases angling efficiency.

Lastly, there was intense discussion about the techniques to ensure accurate casting to far bank features in the dark, especially to place baits under overhanging foliage or close to snags, where an overcast would lead to irretrievable snagging and lost tackle. How I do that is exactly the same as how I ensure casting accuracy in my carp fishing. First, in daylight, obviously, I cast to the required spot and then clip up to the reel. I then wind in and cast back to the clip just to make sure that the range is correct. Next I fold about an inch of white insulating tape around the line at the butt ring, pinching it flat so that there are no wrinkles and none of the sticky underside is protruding. You need to ensure that the line is tightly gripped in the folded crease in the tape. That done, carefully trim the tape with sharp scissors as close to the line as possible, to end up with a flat line-marker about 1mm wide. You will find that this will then not impede casting or form a bulky obstruction on the reel spool.

Having cast a bait into position, obviously unclip the line, or you risk a smash if you get a savage barbel bite. When you’re ready to recast after landing a fish, first make a false cast away from the swim, take in line to bring the white marker alongside the butt ring, and then clip up again. You are now ready to go. In the case of retrieving a terminal rig for a simple re-bait, make sure the white marker is in the right place, clip up and reel in. It’s simple, and foolproof.

See you next month. 
 
 

This article was orginally published in Coarse Angling Today