• You need to be a registered member of Barbel Fishing World to post on these forums. Some of the forums are hidden from non-members. Please refer to the instructions on the ‘Register’ page for details of how to join the new incarnation of BFW...

Barbel Diet Analysis

steve, on the kennet back in the 6s/70s signal cray fish didnt exist there but on a lot of stretches there were an abundance of white crayfish that the barbel at times were suicidal for so i cant see what signals have to do with barbel growth in numbers as back in the time mentioned there was an absolute abundance of barbel.
on the lea diversion you had a good chance of barbel if you had proper spam,
more chance than most unless you knew how to use maggots and chrysalis to your best advantage, never hardly saw crayfish and boilies were virtually unknown unless you were made aware by one of the knowing few,
again barbel numbers have dropped off dramatically.
it would be very interesting to know whether the big tench that lived in Dobbs weir are still resident, those would be caught at a rough % of 5 to 1 on lobworms the 1 was other baits, the carp and barbel again on real spam,
again no signals and few white crays.:)
 
So what we need to do , or a least all the anglers who have the signals in their river is this. Everytime you go fishing , take a crayfish trap , catch a net full of the the little so and so's , kill em , take them home , make them in to a paste / boilie , return to river and munchety crunchety catch loads of barbel on your cray specials and reduce the crayfish problem at the same time . Beats elderberries .....
 
Hi men ,

Yep , i know a perch angler that mashed them up for groundbait and was warned , I think the law say not to return them in any way dead or alive ? .


Hatter
 
Yes Hatter, RDAA rules for instance- "use of bloodworm, joker and crayfish (or parts of) is banned on all association waters" and …"It is illegal to use live bait not caught on the water being fished or crayfish at any time"
 
Is it really the law ? People kill them and take them away to eat them , is that illegal ? I could understand taking them away alive as risk of them being introduced elsewhere but dead , mashed up , boiled and reconstituted ?!
 
Hi men,

Yes Mike , not sure how far it goes as a guide , but to re use them as a form of fish meal base seems ok to me !.


Hatter
 
Mike Hodgkiss said:
Is it really the law ? People kill them and take them away to eat them , is that illegal ? I could understand taking them away alive as risk of them being introduced elsewhere but dead , mashed up , boiled and reconstituted ?!
Click to expand...
You need a licence to do it - so you are informed of the difference between native and Signals. It is illegal to catch, squash and return to river due to the eggs from the female - on a bad day on a specific river not so long ago I had 15 of them being squished by the cows behind me!
 
Whilst fishing on the Kennet yesterday evening the local crayfish trapper came along and I watched him remove a few of his traps. In one, there must have been over 30 crays in it. He reckoned that with the moon in its current phase he would need to check his traps daily whilst at other times of the month he might leave them for 3 or 4 days and then only find a handful in each trap. He must have had several hundred of the little monsters in a 2 ft diameter bucket.
 
Hi men,

I sat and chatted to the trapper one day , his views on the effects of the moon cycle on crays / barbel , interesting stuff ;) . According to the moon that day we should have filled our boots , we didn't , because moon or not we fished like nitwits :D


Hatter
 
Yeah Neil he told me the same thing that as the moon starts to rise and fill at this time of the year is when the crays get biggest and most active. Howard, it would be well worth you / the BS trapping him down and talking to him to get his insight, I imagine that what he doesn't know about the kennet signal crays probably isn't worth knowing.
 
Nick Clark said:
Yeah Neil he told me the same thing that as the moon starts to rise and fill at this time of the year is when the crays get biggest and most active. Howard, it would be well worth you / the BS trapping him down and talking to him to get his insight, I imagine that what he doesn't know about the kennet signal crays probably isn't worth knowing.
Click to expand...

That's not a bad idea Nick, thanks.
 
Undoubtedly, high protein baits have had an effect on barbel increasing in size but the increase was already apparent before pellets and boilies were used on rivers. The most obvious example of this is the Great Ouse. Not the era of the record breakers but just prior to it in the mid nineties when fish of up to 14 pounds were not uncommon. Those were massive fish back then, I think the Medway held the record at 15 something at the time. These fish were being caught on maggots and corn, not HNV baits or oil rich pellets. Also, lesser known barbel rivers (at the time) like the Cherwell were producing doubles when a double from the Avon was still news. Maybe it's just cyclical as well as the obvious effect of rich baits going in.
 
Interesting thread with some great posts,..Alex, as ever you talk good sense and your post got me thinking about some of the barbel that were coming out of our rivers back in the 70s - 90s.
I love picking up some of my old barbel books and letting the authors take me back in time to when they inspired me to book a few days or more on a top river or join a club with decent barbel venues.
When Roger Baker wrote his barbel chapter on the Hamp. Avon as part of the 'Top Ten' book in 1979-80 he had just caught his pb barbel on the Ouse at 12.02 which eclipsed anything he had caught on his favourite ''barbel mecca''...the Avon. His methods at the time were mainly swimfeeding maggots and meat with the odd session with ''a special''.
A good fish from the Avon was a ten at that time, but Roger was inspired by Charles Cassey's 16.02 foul-hooked Avon fish caught long before whilst Salmon fishing, and in ignorance killed and cased. The fish was displayed in the Fish Inn at Ringwood and both Roger and many others including myself gazed at it in awe.
That fish did'nt accertain it's huge size on hnv angler's baits.
I remember one of John Wilson's early Go Fishing [ I think] progs. when he was below the Royalty weir and lifted up some marginal weed which was full of shrimps and other invertebrates and exclaiming ''this is why the barbel flourish here''.

In fact many of the noted barbel captures throughout the 90s were caught on high protein baits but the number of barbel anglers, and quantities of hnv bait being introduced were far less than now of course.
Barbel Catchers Club - History of the Barbel Catchers
Most of the bases have been covered by others on this thread so I will stop waffling on,..but the reasons for bigger barbel could be less competition from smaller brethren on some rivers, hnv baits, and how about genetics perhaps.?
Carp farms have long singled out fast growing fish to breed from and have created fish that will outgrow most natural specimens,..or perhaps it's something in the water!
All the best dt:)
 
As you say, interesting stuff Dave. Just a quick point on the use of pellets which have perhaps had the most profound impact on barbel fishing over the last 20 years (for debate as its way before my angling time). Am I right in saying that the pellets commonly used for barbel are derivatives of trout pellets used to help accelerate and increase the growth rate of trout in trout farms?

Whilst there were undoubtedly examples of very large specimens in a time before HNV baits, the point now I guess is that we are seeing an increase in average weights across most rivers. In part this could be down to a reduction in stock levels but the material increase in the use of HNV baits must be a factor. I note with interest how we are seeing more and more reports of double figure barbel from the Wye. That might just be social media providing an easy outlet for sharing details of such captures which gives the impression of increasing fish weights but I cant help but think that more anglers fishing for barbel predominantly with HNV baits is a signiicant factor.
 
Howard Cooke said:
As you say, interesting stuff Dave. Just a quick point on the use of pellets which have perhaps had the most profound impact on barbel fishing over the last 20 years (for debate as its way before my angling time). Am I right in saying that the pellets commonly used for barbel are derivatives of trout pellets used to help accelerate and increase the growth rate of trout in trout farms?
.
Click to expand...

Howard, you're making me feel old mate!:D
An awful lot of pellets used by anglers have a 20% oil content along with a protein content in excess of 45%,..which is pretty high. As disscussed on other threads, high oil content is thought by some to be detrimental to the health of coarse fish.
John Baker Baits
An absolute top high growth pelleted koi feed which is only recommended at water temps. of 55f and above [ low water temps slow down the passage of food through the digestive tract and is thought harmful if high protein ] would have a p/content of 45% but has an oil content of only 8%.
Thats why koi keepers feed a low protien [ 30% or less] food during low temps.
If however, anglers had to pay the koi keepers price for top pellets they would find it cheaper to use casters!
One point regards protien diets,...one of the highest protein diets for koi are silkworm pupae, not pellets,..these have a protein content of over 60% and are only recommended for feed above 60f. The humble earthworm has a very high protein content as well,..imagine how many of these barbel eat during a bank high flood.:eek:
I agree that a lot of what we chuck in the river has to have some bearing on fish size...and health.
 
Last edited:
An environmentally friendly tackle shop owner, whose shop is next to the river ( I won't say which) swears that the reason the roach in the river next door are so big (plenty of 3LB+ pics on the shop walls) is not because they get fed anything special, or overfed by human introduced food but because of the special natural mineral content of the water in the river.

Not sure if that's relevant but thought I'd chuck it in!
 
Some interesting thoughts on the paper and also some sceptisim of the scientific rational. Science does not resolve or initiate any subjective issues without hard data, and as always should be seen as just a 1st step in further research. There is a lot of both conjecture and fact regarding the weight gains of fish through eating high protein food introduced by anglers. Catfish on the Ebro have increased in size year on year at a fast rate since anglers started using large quantities of halibut pellet. Some of the comments have been dismissive of the paper - it is peer reviewed and is not claiming to be the defining watershed moment in barbel growth or feeding habits- it is clearly just the 1st step in hopefully much more intense research and greater understanding of how humans can (or can not) influence both feeding and growth habits of fish. If any one wants a copy of the full paper please pm me.
 
Some interesting debate on the diet research, and it is important to distinguish between the basic data and conclusions, and the speculation that can result.
Just because the fish appear to eat a lot of easily obtainable bait does not mean that they would starve otherwise, or not grow well without it!
For example, some of the biggest Hampshire Avon fish come from lightly-fished stretches, and can only consume angler bait for a limited part of the season. Avon growth rates are still highest in the UK. See the article in BF33.
I supplied most of the scales, and many were from little-fished stretches.

Barbel growth rates, as with all our freshwater fish, have rocketed in the last thirty years, and it may well be that climate change is a more significant factor than eating bait, since it not only raises average water temperature but also lengthens the growing season; further scale analysis would inform us more on that score!

All interesting stuff, worthy of more research, but we should try and avoid jumping to any firm conclusions!
 
Interesting stuff. Can't completely agree with what you say Pete.

Any correlation between the rise of obesity in the human population over the last 20 -30 years
(Fast food) and the rise in barbel weights (Fast food)????

I think so!

What we are talking about is a fairly short period of max weights for many decades of around 15lb to a weight of over 20lb.


I think that might rule out climate change and mineral absorption changes as a significant factor over such a short period.

Also as a General rule, heavier feeding of certain stretches will overtime bring more fish into the area for easy pickings.
This could mean that some bigger, oft caught fish may vacate to safer areas where they have the benefit of monopolising any free food provided.

Just some more thoughts to throw into the pool (or river in this case)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top