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Are barbel the new carp?

Paul Boote said:
Richie Macdonald, too. I must be one of the very few guys he'd bowl up to at a conference, say "You look effin' bored out your skull, mate - 'ave some of this", then produce a bottle of vodka from a very skinny jeans or jacket pocket. Also one of the very few he'd drink with at the bar afterwards and not have a bit of grief with. Then there was Kevin (not Maddocks)...

Yes. Admire and respect. Me them, them me. No poo-throwing.
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Richie Macdonald: He re-surfaced a few years back, after quite a long hiatus. He done an article in Advanced Carper, "The legend Is Back!", they proclaimed. I remeber reading his book, Richie On Carp, as a youngster and it was quite good it was. Wonder if he's still fishing now.
 
If you mean in popularity Adrian, i'd say becoming more so every season it seems, if you mean by methods and and general approach, then i'd say still much less so, but is definatley moving in that direction.

This is an excerpt from a piece written by a guy on another site ( bait supplier ) describing how he caught a 16lb 12 oz Barbel on the Kennet..........

I put a bit of bait out and then proceeded to get the rods out.

I was fishing one on PGB River Mix and the other on XXX. The XXX was tight to margins just under an over-hanging tree and the River Mix was cast to the far bank where there is a nice under cut as the river lows round to the right.

Everything was in place all I had to do was sit and wait. The bivvy went up and was home for the night, a brew was made and dinner consumed.

Everything was in place all I had to do was sit and wait. The bivvy went up and was home for the night, a brew was made and dinner consumed.

I had had a long day so was out for the count by 9pm. I knew I was not likely to get a bit until later in the morning when I had had most of my bites from the chub and the Barbel so there was no point in staying up.

At 11pm on the dot the near side margin rod screamed off, I launch myself at the rod still in the sleeping bag and began playing a good fish. It actually felt like a good chub all the way to the net. It was until I tried to get it in the net I realised it was not a chub at all but a Barbel and not just any Barbel....... it was massive. I left it to recover in the net whilst I calmed myself down and got the camera, scales and unhooking mat sorted.

He go on to describe his end tackle............

The fish was caught on double CC Moore XXX and a new line by Ultima, Power Carp Ultra, a Green fluorocarbon coated line of 14lb and the Ultima Hyper Silk hook link material. I was using the new Gardner Covert End Tackle, Covert size 6 Wide Gape Hooks, Gardner Covert clip kit (size 8 swivel, lead clip, tail rubber and anti tangle sleeve) and a 4oz Grappler weight in green and Gardner Plummet Lead core.

Everything was pinned down nicely as I like it. I always find it easier to fish a carp style set up when doing a full night as it is very difficult to stay awake all night watching the rod tips. The main changes I make are to increase the length of my hook link and also increase the length of my lead core and then use some Gardner Critical Mass to weight it all down in the right places.

Please don't presume any critism on my part here, i'm not offering any opinion on the guys methods other than, in his case and increasingly others who generally are carpers moving into barbel fishing bringing the approach to their Barbel fishing as they generally employ with their carp fishing.

There are some that will hate it, and others that applaud it.

Ian.
 
There are those that Carp fish with nothing more than a hook and a bit of bait and there are those that spend weeks and thousands of pounds targeting individual fish using the latest 'ultimate' bait, rigs and tackle....

The same will/does happen in Barbel fishing......

Each to their own in my opinion......

Steve
 
Ian, I started the thread because a couple of posters had hijacked another thread with this subject.

With regard to your post I actually fish a bit like that in the Winter on the Dove, I don't use a full bivvy though and only use my normal chair, I put my feet up on my tackle bag and doze the night away under a thin fleece blanket. I'm still undecided about leadcore, I have used it on rivers but confine myself to using helicopter type safety rigs. Unless he's sponsored I find the fact that the bloke felt the need to describe every tiny bit of tackle down to the last detail rather odd.......The Fanny Bareass effect I suppose.
 
I'd much rather catch old anything, none of these new fish for me please. Not too old though, wouldn't want to catch them past their best possible weight.:rolleyes:;):D

I envy those that seem to think that barbel are so stupidly easy to catch. I know better anglers than myself that are perfectly content with one (relatively small) fish per session on my local. More can be caught, when the river is caught right, but few go expecting multiple catches.
God help those fishing the next river north, I doubt that there are many of their number that ever go anticipating catching a barbel. They go in hope rather than expectation.

If I want to catch a winter fish, or stand a reasonable chance of catching more than one barbel, I travel.
 
look, lets be honest, the tackle industry was behind the barbel fishing promotion, probably to bolster up lost sales in carp tackle so they promoted our minority interest into a much more sought after fish with all the prestige promoted, this in turn exploded a vast range of rods and other tackle designed and/or marked as barbel rod ect, after that came the bait industry,
all this happened to source a new sales volume of all singing dancing barbel
equipment which was/is a relatively easy increase in sales, competing with carp fishing/tactics/rigs and so on had nothing to do with the change, yes a lot of carp guys took up barbel as the promotion gained publicised prestige,
there are a lot of barbel anglers that fished for barbel long before the promotion, decades in fact, anglers who also fished for carp, chub, tench ect,
and if any fairly new to the scene barbel anglers think that barbel aren,t as wily as carp then they haven,t fished in real pressurised waters yet, in fact a lot of barbel stretches hold barbel that would make some pressurised carp seem like newly released stockies, ok if your axe still needs grinding then when sharp point in right direction, all this from a fat old git whos been fishing for both barbel and carp for over 50 years now:)
 
Steve Williams said:
There are those that Carp fish with nothing more than a hook and a bit of bait and there are those that spend weeks and thousands of pounds targeting individual fish using the latest 'ultimate' bait, rigs and tackle....

The same will/does happen in Barbel fishing......

Each to their own in my opinion......

Steve
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I'm inclined to agree with Steve here........
(Christ did I write that, I'm being held under duress.:D)


Its not like bad angling is the private reserve of carp angling, is it?
Or do all bad anglers start off fishing for carp and if the results aren't forthcoming, perhaps move onto easy barbel, only to make them harder to catch for the real river anglers??:confused:
 
For me carp and barbel were just two species I fished for.

I began barbelling first (aged 10), then carping (aged 12, though I had had an accidental, mindboggling 4.5-pound common on float from a Wokingham lake when I was 9), got carping seriously in my early to mid teens (18.25 pound mirror from Cut Mill in Surrey when I was sixteen - big fish back then), yet continued barbelling as the Thames was closer, then the Kennet once I had a car, then stopped carping after a move to Wales in the 1970s (bad attack of sea-trout, salmon, mullet and bass mania) and never went back to it as, by the time I returned to south-east England, once-quiet waters were no longer quiet. So I went mad on barbel and several other species with fly, lure and bait. Got back into carping in recent years, though - small-river carping, with fish to 22.75 pounds. Magic.

All species of equal interest and merit, all requiring differing approaches and disciplines, all requiring good angling and some thinking before, during and after to catch them consistently.

I consider myself very fortunate to have had such a wealth of "new stuff" to go after, and would hate to be compartmentalized fishing-wise as many beginners seem almost forced to be now.
 
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I hope barbel are the new carp, then we can look forward to 'barbel apparel' 'bridging the gap between fashion and function', like this lot:

http://www.diem-angling.com/

If there's one thing that troubles me whilst barbel fishing, its whether or not I look good on the bank.
 
Reminds me last time on the Arrow I was talking to a guy that had just arrived late!! He was immaculately turned out from head to toe in an Olive coloured all in one suit with matching luggage, whilst I dipping in to my bucket of maggots attired in bits a pieces of Dickies work wear and a hole in one wellie. To compound my misery even further on my way back to my old Combo van I had noticed he had parked alongside his new BMW...

hope the b'stard blanked:mad:
 
Paul Boote said:
Unsponsored, huh? Then that makes you more than just a merely half-able part-timer, just like me. Which only makes you not only a bigger, but also real, b'stard, to Boote! B'stard!

PS - Let's meet on neutral ground - I suggest somewhere in the appalling Midlands - at dawn, and sort this matter out.
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Enough sir ! I suggest a duel on the sill at Collingham weir , dawn naturally .The assembled masses of carbellers can be witness to your demise
 
Neil Smart said:
Reminds me last time on the Arrow I was talking to a guy that had just arrived late!! He was immaculately turned out from head to toe in an Olive coloured all in one suit with matching luggage, whilst I dipping in to my bucket of maggots attired in bits a pieces of Dickies work wear and a hole in one wellie. To compound my misery even further on my way back to my old Combo van I had noticed he had parked alongside his new BMW...

hope the b'stard blanked:mad:
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I'm sorry its you Neil, but it needs saying: Jealousy is a nasty emotion!

And all your post rings out is pure envy.
I mean why should it detract from your enjoyment of angling, just because he spends more of his money on his chosen pastime than you do on yours?:confused:
 
Mike Hodgkiss said:
Enough sir ! I suggest a duel on the sill at Collingham weir , dawn naturally .The assembled masses of carbellers can be witness to your demise
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Yeah? You and whose army?

Just watch it, Yorkie Boy, or you'll be getting my Free Full Metal Top Gun Armalite Ballista Spirit (with outsized SiCs, including a 60mm. butt ring) where the sun don't shine.

PS - Would you be so kind as to forward me the route to Collingham as it is not to be found on any map that I have.
 
John Walker said:
look, lets be honest, the tackle industry was behind the barbel fishing promotion, probably to bolster up lost sales in carp tackle so they promoted our minority interest into a much more sought after fish with all the prestige promoted, this in turn exploded a vast range of rods and other tackle designed and/or marked as barbel rod ect, after that came the bait industry,
all this happened to source a new sales volume of all singing dancing barbel
equipment which was/is a relatively easy increase in sales, competing with carp fishing/tactics/rigs and so on had nothing to do with the change, yes a lot of carp guys took up barbel as the promotion gained publicised prestige,
there are a lot of barbel anglers that fished for barbel long before the promotion, decades in fact, anglers who also fished for carp, chub, tench ect,
and if any fairly new to the scene barbel anglers think that barbel aren,t as wily as carp then they haven,t fished in real pressurised waters yet, in fact a lot of barbel stretches hold barbel that would make some pressurised carp seem like newly released stockies, ok if your axe still needs grinding then when sharp point in right direction, all this from a fat old git whos been fishing for both barbel and carp for over 50 years now:)
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Well i have to disagree slightly John, only slightly mind you ! :D

The Barbel boom if i can call it that, was very much angler driven IMO, the tackle industry realising the niche in the market jumped on the band wagon, as they always would do, with Barbel weights increasing in most areas, and the ability to fight hard it was only a minimal move from 'modern' carp tackle to that of 'modern' barbel tackle to enable anglers to fish much in the same way for both species.
Like most here i guess, i know people who fish the same way they did 50 odd years ago, if not being one themselves ;)

I guess i fall somewhere in the middle, Two rods most often, boillies, hair rigs, recently started useing my baitrunners, because strapping my rods down was marking the corks. occasionally use my bite alarms when i'm prettry sure i'm likley to nod off, but i never Bivvy up, or purposefully go to sleep, much less in a sleeping bag. As for all the end tackle rigs & bits, - tubing, helicopter rigs etc etc, no i dont, but my 'rig' is most definatley a bog standard set up originaly developed with carp in mind, so if i haven't actually jumped on the band wagon, i suppose you could say i've got one foot on it :D

The basic elements of Carp fishing that are used primarily today have been around for a long time, and have been evolving since the 40's maybe earlier,
technology in materials and electronics have moved on a pace but the ideas are basically the same, and as i've said as Barbel grew to prestigous weights compared to even 20 years ago, Anglers - not always those new Barbel fishing have latched on to them, some to the exteremes others like me picking out the bits that suit me, and my style of fishing, the tackle industry just kept up with demand IMO, they'd be fools not to !

There are practices more than the tackle employed which i hate to see, and borders on downright irresponsible IMO, but then so where so many practices way back when.
Generally the way fish are treated nowadays has been totally transformed from those days, but you'll never completly eradicate irresponsible practice,
again what constitutes that is a matter of opinion, what i might deem unacceptable, to others may seem entirley acceptable.
Still when the occasion calls for it i'll shout and holler like the rest, and propably get as good as i give :D

Mostly apart from the obvious, it's like Scuba Steve says - each to there own.

Ian.
 
ian, i dont disagree at all mate, what i was trying to point out was a lot of us olduns were fishing for both carp and barbel and obviously if your aware that some and i say some carp applications aids your barbel fishing then use it and the methods haven,t been brought over by disillusioned carp men or
disheartened ones turning to barbel, we was already doing it, yes boilies made big weight gains and pellets even more so, alas can also shorten the barbels lifespan too but, but aint those weights come on since the peach boilies on the kennet;)20 0dd years back, yeah the crays too but not as weight packing as pellets or boilies,problem we have now is far far more guys are fishing for same number of barbel so pretty soon if not already those fish are maybe going to use their ability to disappear for months or even years before getting caught, we all know barbel are capable of doing this on open rivers, long gone are the days of a gallon of gentles or 8-10lb of hemp, both were favoured g/baits of mine down on laleham green when i was in late teens, cor! them old b/cane med casting rods used to be the most twisted and set things i could ruin through great big homemade feeders:D
hows that boat:)
 
Colin Gordon said:
I'm sorry its you Neil, but it needs saying: Jealousy is a nasty emotion!

And all your post rings out is pure envy.
I mean why should it detract from your enjoyment of angling, just because he spends more of his money on his chosen pastime than you do on yours?:confused:
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You are joking... No?
It was purely tongue in cheek, (and a laugh at my expense)

Jeez:rolleyes:
 
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