Beginning Barbel Fishing
By Tony Miles​
3 – TECHNIQUES FOR SUMMER BARBEL
In the last feature, I mentioned that it is the preparatory work that is most important for consistent success with barbel, and this is particularly true if a group of fish contains one big individual that is a specific target. The normal approach of starting to fish for the barbel shortly after they are located almost invariably leads to the bait being taken first by small to average fish. The prebaiting procedure outlined takes advantage of our observations of barbel feeding behaviour, and maximises the chances of the biggest fish present being the first to take the hookbait. It is this I want to discuss in this article and I would like to illustrate the various points by describing a big fish taken from the Great Ouse last summer.
On the day in question, locating the fish was no particular problem as the river was low and clear and barbel in evidence in several swims. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, a huge barbel flashing under the a streamer in a mid river depression. The main problem in targeting that fish was the presence of perhaps twenty other barbel and a posse of chub. It is important to bear in mind that the technique I am about to describe was specifically planned to catch the big fish, which I estimated at 14lbs. The length of time I waited until actually introducing a hook bait would not have been necessary if I had just wanted to catch any barbel.
Having studied the fish that morning for twenty minutes or so, I could see the pattern of their comings and goings, and it was always the same. The first fish back to the swim after excursions up or down stream would always be an eight pounder with a white patch on its back, followed by a few other average barbel and then the small group of bigger fish, which contained the one I was after.
Most of my previous big fish from the Ouse had been taken on corn, generally by placing a bait close to a snag where a big individual fish had been located. In this case, however, I felt my best chance lay with the technique I had perfected on the Cherwell, that of saturation baiting over several hours with hemp and maggots to get the fish into a feeding frenzy. The idea of this is for the fish to lose all inhibition and for the big one to assert its natural dominance, and greed, to get to the bait first.
There was another factor at work. The barbel I wanted always seemed to be feeding slightly apart from the others, preferring the shelf close to the near bank while the bulk of the shoal stayed in the depression itself. That gave me another obvious advantage. If I applied the bulk of the bait into the depression, and a smaller amount much closer in, I could possibly attain a degree of segregation and further enhance my chances with the big fish.
I had decided to bait for at least four hours before attempting to introduce a hook bait, spending the time between baiting sessions indulging in some very enjoyable surface chubbing with chum mixers about thirty yards downstream on the shallows. It was late morning before I was settled, and then I baited every half hour or so, each time introducing a pint of maggots, and a pint of mixed hemp and Partiblend. I was using the standard black Thamesley dropper that day, and for every ten droppers that went into the main depression, one went on the shelf. The wild card, and something that turned out to be vitally important in the end, was that twice the dropper sprang open as I was swinging it out, dumping the load in the margins virtually under the rod top.
As the hours wore on, I witnessed ever increasingly frenzied feeding, but never once did I see the really big fish in the depression. I caught an occasional glimpse of big orange pectorals under the streamer fringe of the near bank shelf and had to assume that was the fish I was after.
By 3.00pm, I was ready to fish, much earlier than I would normally elect but the stretch in question has a night ban, and had elected the hook bait that had proved so devastating on the Cherwell, a bunch of around twenty large white maggots on a size 6 hook. Very carefully, I lowered the bait on to that near shelf, adjacent to the streamer clump under which I judged the big fish to be hiding, and then sat back to wait. Almost immediately, I had an unwelcome bite from a nuisance fish, which was a disturbance I could have done without. Although I am usually delighted with a 2lb perch, this one’s appearance was certainly ill timed.
For an hour after positioning the second bait, the rod top remained steadfastly unmoving, and it was all racing through my mind. Had I waited long enough, had the big fish joined the others in the depression, had catching the perch undone all my patient preparation, and so on. Several times, I got to my feet and peered over the head high rushes, always seeing the frenzied feeding some five yards from where my hook bait lay, but never once seeing the big one. It was tempting to wind in and place a bait where I could guarantee a bite. After all, several of the barbel in the depression were themselves big, certainly into double figures. But I decided against. All my plans had been geared to avoiding the shoal and if I abandoned them now I would learn nothing.
Another quiet hour passed and then something happened that got my brain back into gear. I was sitting behind rushes, well back from the waters edge, and the rod top extending no more than a foot beyond the rushes. The margins at that point are about two feet deep. As I stared intently at the rod top, the line looped lazily over my right forefinger in case my attention wandered temporarily, there was a slight disturbance right under the rod top and the tip of a barbel’s dorsal broke surface, to be followed by a vortex as the fish turned.
In an instant, the underwater scenario unfolded, and I remembered the feed that had fallen mistakenly right in the edge. This lay directly upstream of the shelf on which my hook bait lay and it would be natural for a fish feeding on that shelf to follow the bait trail upstream. I then realised why I had not seen the big fish feeding; it had been tight against the near bank rushes, almost under my feet.
It was the work of an instant to reposition a hook bait under the rod top, but now I had to be really alert. With such a short line, a bite from a big fish was certain to be a savage affair. I was not disappointed. No more than five minutes later, the rod plunged round, the clutch screamed, and I was on my feet as an immense fish tried for the midriver streamer. I was happy enough to allow that, but when he tried for the fallen branches on the far bank I was forced to clamp down hard and use the power of the rod to absorb all the plunges.
Those were a tense few minutes, as I could see the massive fish I had hooked was the one I had targeted, but in truth I was never in serious danger of losing it. The combination of the progressive action rod, 10lb line and the ever reliable hook hold of the Au Lion D’or, meant that I would have had to do something stupid. Thankfully, that didn’t happen and eventually the net folded around a colossal fish that proved to weigh 14lb 2ozs, my second biggest ever.
There are important observations to make about this story, concerning the use of maggots. There is no doubt this is the most devastating barbel bait of all, specially where you wish or are forced to fish in daylight. The problems with using them are obviously cost and the fact that you need to use them in large quantities to make them work properly. To attain preoccupied feeding, specially where you wish to isolate a big fish as I did, at least a gallon of bait is required, which is expensive. For this reason, it is unrealistic to prepare four or five swims this way, as I have described for other baits. If maggots are your choice, select a swim carefully, and then concentrate the feed.
Where I have free rein to fish at night, I rarely use maggots, as the meaty baits and certainly the modern pastes really come into their own in the dark hours. If I have decided upon flavoured meat over hemp, I will prepare at least four swims with hemp and Partiblend throughout the day, starting fishing at dusk and then commuting from swim to swim through the night. More and more these days, specially during my bait trials over the last few years, I bait with handfuls of bait samples, either pastes or boilies, and in this instance dispense with the hemp. The unique flavour of the bait is the pulling power, unlike the more traditional approach where the hemp is the initial attractant. It is true to say that a swim properly prepared with hemp could produce a barbel instantly to any hookbait properly presented over it. Conversely, a swim prepared with a special paste often sees the barbel refusing any bait other than the paste, and this is a vitally important factor when you are targeting barbel which have been widely pursued with the hemp saturation approach.
Fascinating, isn’t it!