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Advice on a different type of water

C

Colin Boon

Member
Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm after some advice on how to approach my local stretch of river. For some back ground, I grew up fishing the rivers of Dorset and Hampshire fishing for the chub and barbel. Whilst I never set the world alight with my returns, I didn't do too badly.

Three years ago I moved to Slovenia and I have a stretch of river a 10 minute bike ride from my house that is never really fished, except by predator anglers. It is almost unfished, and its very wild, about 15 miles of river with maybe 12 fish able swims. I have fished it maybe 30 or 40 times in the years that I've lived here, landing 10 barbel, loads of chub, and even more Danube roach. However, I feel like my returns are very poor considering how many barbel I have seen in the river.

The water itself is very much out of my comfort zone with it being snaggy, very slow, extremely deep, between 6-10 metres on average. I know the fish are there because I have seen hundreds of them up and down the river from bridges, so they're definitely there.

As for how I have been targeting them: I have been using cage feeders of various sizes dependent on flow, packed with groundbait, hemp, corn, chickpeas etc. Most of my success with barbel has come on garlic cheese that LIDL sold, but its now discontinued. I have caught one barbel on luncheon meat, but I mostly get plagued by Danube roach. Boilies have not received any interest, but white mainline cell wafters have caught me a few chub. Pellets just get plucked at.

I am open to any suggestions than any of you wiser folk may have, it's a real head scratcher for me.

Thanks for reading.
 
Seems tour doing the right things, however I would try and concentrate the barbel into an area by intense groundbaiting. You are blessed with large shoals of barbel so this approach could help.
I would start a session with 10 or so tennis ball sized g/b and continue in that vein for a few sessions, fishing over with a feeder.
NIce problem to have considering what we have on most of our rivers here.
 
Alan Palmer said:
I was thinking the same….heavy baiting and ore-baiting one or two likely stretches…would imaging you would soon get them eating boilies with pre-baiting
Would be interesting to see some pics of the river and your catches Colin 👍
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Scalded pellets and hemp balls up nicely and doesn't wash away as easily as a groundbait ... maybe worth a shot
 
As others have said you’re fortunate at having shoaling fish.

Get the bait in and have them grubbing around for it and competing between themselves.

Hemp is good as it’s not as easy for chub to pick up when it falls between the stones…a barbel however will hoover it up like a vacuum.

Have a look at Des Taylor’s YouTube videos on “Pudding Mix”. It’s a really easy mix you can make with pellet, hot water and whatever particles you have to hand.
 
Thank you all for your replies, some useful suggestions there. With regard to pre-baiting, do you think its worth spending a bit of money on a quality pellet or groundbait, or should I go to Decathlon where there is much better value for money, but an arguably lesser product?

Coincidentally, I have almost always had better results after a bit of rain when the flow increases, but I invariably also leave the river with a couple of new feeders and hook lengths in it because of the snags. 😅
 
Gavin Burt said:
As others have said you’re fortunate at having shoaling fish.

Get the bait in and have them grubbing around for it and competing between themselves.

Hemp is good as it’s not as easy for chub to pick up when it falls between the stones…a barbel however will hoover it up like a vacuum.

Have a look at Des Taylor’s YouTube videos on “Pudding Mix”. It’s a really easy mix you can make with pellet, hot water and whatever particles you have to hand.
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Thank you Gavin. I should add that the area is mostly mud. Downstream 20 miles it shallows up and is all gravel and rock. You can go downstream in May and see thousands of fish shoaling up in the shallows. Its amazing to see.
 
Alan Palmer said:
I was thinking the same….heavy baiting and ore-baiting one or two likely stretches…would imaging you would soon get them eating boilies with pre-baiting
Would be interesting to see some pics of the river and your catches Colin 👍
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I was thinking about going down for a look today, but given that it's been raining for 48 hours I suspect I'll not be able to get close to the bank. If I can I'll take some pictures. 👍
 
Colin Boon said:
Thank you Gavin. I should add that the area is mostly mud. Downstream 20 miles it shallows up and is all gravel and rock. You can go downstream in May and see thousands of fish shoaling up in the shallows. Its amazing to see.
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I would personally be looking for barbel on the gravel patches, but then again I don't know the river.

If there's rain on it then look for some slack water on the inside margin and drop in a rod-length out (or where the crease-line is).
 
Gavin Burt said:
I would personally be looking for barbel on the gravel patches, but then again I don't know the river.

If there's rain on it then look for some slack water on the inside margin and drop in a rod-length out (or where the crease-line is).
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That's the thing, there is barely any gravel. I've leaded and marker floated every available swim. It's either silt or clay. I was expecting some of it to be scoured away in the floods, but I think it's too deep. If I wanted to find gravel I'd have to go 15km up or downstream.
 
I assuming you will be able to source bulk quantities of hemp? Hemp is an economical way of groundbaiting and barbel love it. Invest in a spopper or two. Tares are also very good for barbel and good value. Stewed wheat and sweetcorn can be also very effective.

If I was fishing for unpressured barbel that rarely, if ever, see anglers baits then I would just use meat as a hookbait, maybe even sweetcorn. Boilies or pellets wouldn't come into my thinking.

If there are gravel runs 15km up or down river then I wouldn't think twice about jumping in the car.

And don't worry about using beefed up tackle if your worried about snags, the barbel won't be bothered.
 
Thanks for your reply Joe. There are a few issues with meat, of which the predominant one is that the Danube roach absolutely love it. I have caught one barbel on meat, and one chub. Every other fish has been Danube roach. Not that I mind, they're an interesting fish and fight quite well.

Whilst I'm not against driving to either of those other spots, the one above is in the middle of a town, the one below has a busy main road running right next to it and I can imagine that fishing at either would get irritating pretty fast. 😅

Edit: I would post a picture of a Danube roach but it won't let me.
 
Colin Boon said:
That's the thing, there is barely any gravel. I've leaded and marker floated every available swim. It's either silt or clay. I was expecting some of it to be scoured away in the floods, but I think it's too deep. If I wanted to find gravel I'd have to go 15km up or downstream.
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I'd be heading to these spots if it was me, although I note you said you cycle so may not be easy to get to.
 
Gavin Burt said:
May sound daft but have you got access to a small boat ?

Also, where is this place as we all want to visit 😂😂😂😂
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Lol, no. But the thought has crossed my mind.

It's a tributary of the Sava river. There is a video on YouTube of a guy fishing the feeder on the Sava. He has something ridiculous like 36 barbel in a few hours. But Sava is a very different river.
 
This is a picture from the only swim that I could get near today. 🙂
 

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Maggots, that would be my choice, I've fished rivers in france and Holland, and on all occasions, maggots out fished any bait we used for barbel, they turned there nose up at both luncheon meat and boilies, but we caught a good share on small pellets, single 8mm and banded 6mm ...
At the end of the day, they are foreign.....
😆
 
Wrap your meat/prawn/mince in Fox Armamesh . . . for meat use a large punch to create various length sausages and present on a hair as you would normally (you can attach the hair loop around the knot in the mesh) - it will withstand small fish attention . . .you can re-use / soak hookbaits in a glug indefinitely
 
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