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Barbel boiled baits back when?

Yeah, i just put it down to application ;) :D

Remember Robin ? he used to use these massive hard baits that Fred had given him to test one of his theory's, they were made so big that any Tench under 8lb couldn't physically fit one in its mouth ! trouble is, to my knowledge only one of over that weight ever managed anyway :) i once offered him some of my bait but he declined on the grounds that Fred might kill him :lol
 
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Funny thing is that I think the quality boilie thing is more relevant to barbel fishing than it ever was with carp and tench (especially tench). Fred said to me that he gave more credence to chub as being an intelligent fish as they were quick to pick up his hi-pro offerings while by his reckoning barbel were dim as they took longer to cotton on to it as a food source. By my reckoning chub are just plain greedy and will eat anything while barbel are as he says.... but once you have a quality bait established with them, barbel are total suckers for it and, providing you have the application sorted, will fall for it time after time.
 
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Simon Lush said:
:D Massively influential was Fred, i always thought it a shame that he stood back and let others take the credit for his work/thinking, but aint that the way nowadays :rolleyes: I remember bumping into him in the woods at Sandy Balls on the Hants Avon one night, (An unpleasant thing at the best of times :D:D) he was chucking in these huge yellow balls, upon asking the question, "A sort of paste" was all i got :) Mid 80's bout right.
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Hi Simon,

I always felt the same way about Lenny Middleton. The hair rig is widely thought of these days as having been invented by Kevin Maddocks, mainly because of the publicity it received in his book 'Carp Fever'. However, it was in fact the fertile brain of Lenny, and his development work on the rig, that reall brought it about. Kevin did have some initial input, but the fame and fortune resulting from his book elevated his part in the rig, and consigned poor Lenny more or less to the background. Such is life, and as you say, "Aint that the way nowadays".

Cheers, Dave.
 
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Didnt start using boilies for barbel until 1993, myself. Bit slow on the uptake considering i was making them for carp from the mid to late 80's:eek:

Does anyone remember the paste baits that were being used prior to the bright spark who decided to start rolling and boiling them. Back in the late 70's i remember using hi-pro, which was i think one of the first commercially available dry mixes, i did quite well on it with carp at the time, but again didnt give it a thought for barbel. We were also using strawberry complan mixed with bemax and lanes strawberry flavouring; might have been another ingredient, but i cant remember it was so long ago.

Paul
 
I'm going a bit off track here but, following the big bait theory, I remember going to fish for cats at Claydon with Dave Plummer in around 87 and decided to take a two pronged attack using boilies on one rod and livelies on the other. The mix I decided on was a DIY concoction made mostly from meat and bonemeal, blood albumin, liver powder and liquidised squid. I rolled the baits out to be about the same size as a tennis ball in order to keep the carp off them. While these mega boilies were still drying off in the kitchen Roger Miller came around in his old bill uniform skiving off from keeping Norwich lawful and safe. They must have triggered an instant feeding instinct as when I asked him what he thought of them he picked one up and took a big bite out of it.:eek:

Apparently he thought they were meatballs... but the look of disgust on his face was priceless! :D
 
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Simon Lush said:
Beg to differ on that one Ian but no he wasn't and i'm sure he'll tell you as much, Fred Wilton and his boys were way ahead of everyone else when it came to Boiled baits and HNV'S for barbel, the people to answer this question are The Kent lads, messers Monday,Morris ETC.
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I am wrong to say Tony was a pioneer of using Barbel for boilies, I was more trying to answer the questions Darren asked, or point him at a good source of information.

I have to agree with others that this thread is a real breath of fresh air and great to read........

I know one of the guys first using boilies on my local waters was a part of the same group with Fred, etc..........Ian Grant knows him well
 
I recall making up a groundbait for barbel, a foul concoction using bran and a tinned dog food (Red Heart if I remember right) + hemp and one or two other bits and pieces. On the hook would be either Spam or a paste made from the same dog food, + Weetabix, again with other bits I can't bring to mind. That would have been late 60's, early 70's....it worked :p Quite some time after that I used a groundbait available in the shops called 'Meatymix' (I think), again used with added dog food etc., with paste made with the stiffened groundbait or meat on the hook.

I also recall making paste using strawberry Nesquick as the flavour a little later. I had a friend who's father ran an animal feed and grain supply business in the early 70's as well, which was a rich source of ideas, based mainly on the highly scientific 'That smells good' factor :D

Cheers, Dave.
 
I first used boilies for barbel circa 1988 on the Cherwell, not where the 'better' anglers were ripping them out (Shipton onwards) but up at the unfancied areas of Heyford and Northbrook.
Had naff all success on them for two seasons, its doubtful that this was due to the barbel being slow on accepting them, more that I was fishing swims that were devoid of barbel!!:eek::D

No thoughts of me innovating a new bait, purely that the Anglers Mail recipe I'd been using said bream, tench and barbel would probably all take them as well as the carp which they designed for.
Plus I had a freezer full of them.:)

The mix so far as I remember mainly consisted of Weetabix, Marmite and meat and bone meal or tinned dog food (nought hi-tec there:D), though the latter was replaced with fishmeal as my uncle was a farmer and used it in cattle feed and assured me it was a higher quality inclusion than meat and bone meal.;)
Seemingly it was a better choice of ingredient, it certainly helped me bang the carp out of Farnborough pool.
 
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Chris Turnbull said:
Funny thing is that I think the quality boilie thing is more relevant to barbel fishing than it ever was with carp and tench (especially tench). Fred said to me that he gave more credence to chub as being an intelligent fish as they were quick to pick up his hi-pro offerings while by his reckoning barbel were dim as they took longer to cotton on to it as a food source. By my reckoning chub are just plain greedy and will eat anything while barbel are as he says.... but once you have a quality bait established with them, barbel are total suckers for it and, providing you have the application sorted, will fall for it time after time.
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Not just a 'quality' bait Chris, once Barbel are onto any bait be it Maggots, meat, pellets, HNV's or whatever, they are likely to be caught on it several times, sometimes in a ridiculously short period of time ! they do give the impression of not being too bright and they aren't :)
 
Alex, they got plenty of unwanted attention from the chub especially at Heyford, though that was back in the days when they were prolific but they were easily detered, I was using 24mm+ boilies to keep Farnborough's bream at bay and your average chub at Heyford being about 2lb, they simply couldn't fit the bait in their gobs.:eek::D

I dare say if used as a soft paste and not boiled into rock hard balls, they'd have absolutely nailed it, I might have considered finding out the old recipe but it reads like an invite to be crayed out.:(:mad:

(obviously a top notch mix, proof being its attraction to the fearfullest of all fishes;):))
 
Simon Lush said:
Not just a 'quality' bait Chris, once Barbel are onto any bait be it Maggots, meat, pellets, HNV's or whatever, they are likely to be caught on it several times, sometimes in a ridiculously short period of time ! they do give the impression of not being too bright and they aren't :)
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Mostly I'd agree with you there Simon, but I'm very sure that by getting a quality boilie established, I have caught some very big barbel that just would not have confidently settled on a bed of pellets, etc. I've also unspooked some very spooked fish, having them 'get over themselves' by being mad on my quality boilies at times when they would not have had anything to do with pellets, etc. It does of course take a fair period of generous pre-baiting to achieve this though!
 
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David Gauntlett said:
Hi Simon,

I always felt the same way about Lenny Middleton. The hair rig is widely thought of these days as having been invented by Kevin Maddocks, mainly because of the publicity it received in his book 'Carp Fever'. However, it was in fact the fertile brain of Lenny, and his development work on the rig, that reall brought it about. Kevin did have some initial input, but the fame and fortune resulting from his book elevated his part in the rig, and consigned poor Lenny more or less to the background. Such is life, and as you say, "Aint that the way nowadays".

Cheers, Dave.
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Dave, its unlikely that some of the younger members of this site will even have an inkling as to how big a bombshell Lenny's hair rig was ! its amazing how that little bit of line changed certain aspects of fishing forever, i do however think in many cases it stopped people thinking beyond the 'hair' and its now many variants, which is silly because a lot of the time its totally unneccesary and sometimes just a hinderence :rolleyes:

Paul, my first use of boilies came much later than yours !! it was only a handfull of years ago in fact, i did OK on an HNV but the fact is that up until that time i was so heavily engrossed in the Maggot/Caster/ Particle approach (which goes for much of my fishing) that i just didn't bother, after all, myself and a couple of mates were simply turning waters inside out (Tench and Barbel) without needing to get the bait rolling gear back out!!

Nowadays, having seen what a number of very good anglers can do with a VERY good bait i must admit to going over the old recipes and thinking how some of the newer ingredients would complement them, one already mentioned on this thread, just leave the birdfood out mate ;)
 
Chris Turnbull said:
Mostly I'd agree with you there Simon, but I'm very sure that by getting a quality boilie established, I have caught some very big barbel that just would not have confidently settled on a bed of pellets, etc. I've also unspooked some very spooked fish, having them 'get over themselves' by being mad on my quality boilies at times when they would not have had anything to do with pellets, etc. It does of course take a fair period of generous pre-baiting to achieve this though!
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Chris, you mis-understand me mate :) i didn't mean to imply that they never spook off a bait because they will eventually, although sometimes its just the manner in which its presented to them, you know, large beds, small clusters etc, the things they most commonly see and get tripped up on.

Certainly a well applied HNV will be a very persuasive food source for even very wary fish, hence my new found interest ;)
 
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Agree with you Simon ref Sandy Balls as I was fishing the 'dark' area [pre walkway] then although at the time I didn't skin the boilies but used a paste as it was rare to be troubled with other species. '85 seems about right.
Although can't speak about the Kent lads but I think the spin off from carp baits went first to tench with Len A, Kevin C, Ron C, Bill Q and others using them with great sucess at a Colne Valley water. The story behind this is published in Len's excellent book "Catching Big Tench". Not sure of the date but suggest it may be about '83 as I came off Savay '81.

Mike
 
I don't think it will ever be lost in the realms of time, despite Kevin Maddocks being the bigger more widely recognised name, Lenny Middleton is basically given full credit for thinking up the hair-rig, just google 'who invented the hair-rig' and you'll see, though apparently Kevin's wife Karen donated the original hair.:)
 
Mike Wilson said:
Agree with you Simon ref Sandy Balls as I was fishing the 'dark' area [pre walkway] then although at the time I didn't skin the boilies but used a paste as it was rare to be troubled with other species. '85 seems about right.
Although can't speak about the Kent lads but I think the spin off from carp baits went first to tench with Len A, Kevin C, Ron C, Bill Q and others using them with great sucess at a Colne Valley water. The story behind this is published in Len's excellent book "Catching Big Tench". Not sure of the date but suggest it may be about '83 as I came off Savay '81.

Mike
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Didn't think you would resist this thread for long Mike :) Yes, you are right about the Tench/carp baits thing coming first,it was staggering what came out of the Johnsons lakes and the 'Colne valley water' at the time as a direct result of their use, although in retrospect i do think the modern day maggot tactics would have done very well also, definately for numbers of fish, though thats just my opinion, never know now i suppose!

Re Sandy Balls, were you ever down there when the Tree worshipers started up their chanting? Rabbits nose stuff that was :D
 
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still loads more life left in the "milks" yet, too much money and too much hassle for most, had my best ever seasons on them, should get back on them really! Wether it was down to nutritional recognition or they just liked the taste/smell i'll never know but at the time it didn't matter!
 
Simon

My gosh yes.
Around 83/4 ish used to get my 'tickets', wait until it was dark and drive down the gentle slope [!!]. Park on the flat at the bottom where the flower people had a caravan and walk to the big overhanging tree that had the slack to the left.
The place was alive with badgers and owls as you know. All seemed very tame. Got caught about '87 ish for driving down and told to walk in future. No problem going down but the walk back up was like climbing Everest. Used to love the place as it was rare to see another guy although one night a fellow was guesting on the far bank and fishing just where I used to upstream it. Had 3 doubles that night to 13+ he shouted over proudly as he left for his mighty walk towards Salisbury.
I'd love my time again

Take care

Mike
 
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