Best pellets

[Mike Hodgkiss]

I think all these different names / flavours are just marketing ploys primarily designed primarily to attract anglers . As is evident in this thread all these different pellets will catch Barbel that's because Barbel are not fussy eaters, if feeding they will eat almost anything that's put in front of them . In the end it's all about confidence , if you use a particular brand of pellet and catch Barbel then you will continue to use them ; you are happy , the manufacturer is happy and the Barbel are happy , jobs a good un !

 

[Neil Smart]

You guys still catching on these during the colder months?

I've been thinking about the dynamite Robin reds, but not sure on their track records?

These pellets are as good as any other pellet, in fact all pellets are as good as any other you can think of.
In summary the best pellet is the last one that caught.
BUT...I think size is more important in certain conditons.

 

[Neil Smart]

I think all these different names / flavours are just marketing ploys primarily designed primarily to attract anglers . As is evident in this thread all these different pellets will catch Barbel that's because Barbel are not fussy eaters, if feeding they will eat almost anything that's put in front of them . In the end it's all about confidence , if you use a particular brand of pellet and catch Barbel then you will continue to use them ; you are happy , the manufacturer is happy and the Barbel are happy , jobs a good un !

As I was typing, some great advice.

 

[Gavin Burt]

I think all these different names / flavours are just marketing ploys primarily designed primarily to attract anglers . As is evident in this thread all these different pellets will catch Barbel that's because Barbel are not fussy eaters, if feeding they will eat almost anything that's put in front of them . In the end it's all about confidence , if you use a particular brand of pellet and catch Barbel then you will continue to use them ; you are happy , the manufacturer is happy and the Barbel are happy , jobs a good un !

Agreed - my mate always told me "you could catch a barbel on a wellington boot if it was hungry enough".

It's all about confidence in your bait and how you apply it.

When pellet fishing on the river I use Hinders Elips 95% of the time. I've tried other (3FT, shop-bought stuff) but have never done as well.

The main reason I use the bait I do as I know almost no-one else on the river uses it and I use it pretty sparingly. A 1kg bag of large Elips lasts me an entire season.

 

[Mike Hodgkiss]

As a little experiment , a number of years a go I stopped using pellets altogether for Barbel fishing . I caught plenty of Barbel using pellets as bait and filling up little PVA bags with small pellets as an attractant as this was what most anglers were doing but I get fed up with fiddling about with PVA stockings and drilling pellets etc . Instead I decided I would use large lumps of Spam as a hookbait with no feed , I fished the same rivers in all conditions and still caught Barbel .Two things I did notice was that I caught a few less Barbel but the ones I caught were noticeably larger in average size , secondly when the river was very cold in winter the Spam became less effective , rather than go back to pellets I saw that some anglers were doing very well using multiple maggots on the hook with a swim feeder full of maggots , I gave this a try and hey presto my winter Barbel catch tally began to rise . I did think that using maggots would result in me catching lots of smaller ' nuisance ' species but for whatever reason that didn't happen .Going back to the swop from pellet to Spam , I decided on Spam as it didn't seem to attract the dreaded Bream or other smaller species quite so much , although I did find that Pike have a fondness for it .You can catch Barbel on virtually any bait and I have done so from dead minnows through to Bread crust and Sweetcorn however the latter two baits are attractive to virtually every other fish that swims in the river . I could have swopped from Pellets to dead minnows but I felt sorry for the minnows, but they are a good bait for Barbel . The ONLY bait I have used that I am convinced gave me an edge when Barbel fishing was Garlic Spam but sadly this is no longer available and the Garlic flavoured meats that you can buy don't seem to have the same attraction . It's interesting how some baits go out of fashion , look back to the 70's and 80's Sweetcorn was the go to bait for Barbel however back in those days luncheon meat was popular as well . The common theme seems to me meaty type baits . In victorian times Bullock pith and Tallow were used for Barbel fishing with great success . Anyway this rambling post is not contributing much to the best pellet debate so I will leave it there .Maybe dead Minnow flavoured pellets would work ? ....

 

[Neil Smart]

As a little experiment , a number of years a go I stopped using pellets altogether for Barbel fishing . I caught plenty of Barbel using pellets as bait and filling up little PVA bags with small pellets as an attractant as this was what most anglers were doing but I get fed up with fiddling about with PVA stockings and drilling pellets etc . Instead I decided I would use large lumps of Spam as a hookbait with no feed , I fished the same rivers in all conditions and still caught Barbel .Two things I did notice was that I caught a few less Barbel but the ones I caught were noticeably larger in average size , secondly when the river was very cold in winter the Spam became less effective , rather than go back to pellets I saw that some anglers were doing very well using multiple maggots on the hook with a swim feeder full of maggots , I gave this a try and hey presto my winter Barbel catch tally began to rise . I did think that using maggots would result in me catching lots of smaller ' nuisance ' species but for whatever reason that didn't happen .Going back to the swop from pellet to Spam , I decided on Spam as it didn't seem to attract the dreaded Bream or other smaller species quite so much , although I did find that Pike have a fondness for it .You can catch Barbel on virtually any bait and I have done so from dead minnows through to Bread crust and Sweetcorn however the latter two baits are attractive to virtually every other fish that swims in the river . I could have swopped from Pellets to dead minnows but I felt sorry for the minnows, but they are a good bait for Barbel . The ONLY bait I have used that I am convinced gave me an edge when Barbel fishing was Garlic Spam but sadly this is no longer available and the Garlic flavoured meats that you can buy don't seem to have the same attraction . It's interesting how some baits go out of fashion , look back to the 70's and 80's Sweetcorn was the go to bait for Barbel however back in those days luncheon meat was popular as well . The common theme seems to me meaty type baits . In victorian times Bullock pith and Tallow were used for Barbel fishing with great success . Anyway this rambling post is not contributing much to the best pellet debate so I will leave it there .Maybe dead Minnow flavoured pellets would work ? ....

Love it...

 

[Mike Hodgkiss]

Totally agree with you here, and I'd also add that if your fishing popular & busy waters the choice of bait does have a factor on success, as there's more bait going in giving fish too much choice. So getting on the right flavour & brand I think plays a crucial role here (could be wrong)

I'm fishing a long stretch of water that involves a lot of roving, but have found because no one else can be bothered to do the walks, my bait is being more readily accepted, because no one else is having any influence on what's going in.

That's an interesting point Julian , maybe on the lightly fished stretch the Barbel are liking your bait as its the only bait that's going in the water , hobsons choice, other than any natural food that's around . As for Barbel choosing one bait over another I am not convinced . If there is a lot of bait / feed going in to a popular stretch maybe the Barbel , greedy as they are are just plain full up , just like Mr Creosote [ ref end of Monty Python film ' ''the meaning of Life '' ]. I cannot resist watching some of the plethora of Barbel videos on Youtube , many of these anglers think nothing of chucking in a kilo or more of boilies/ pellets even if only fishing for a few hours ; yes, this tactic may well attract the Barbel in to the area but my possibly flawed logic would say ,the more items of food in the swim the less likely your hook bait is going to get picked up , or would this be countered by the sheer number of Barbel that turn up attracted by the feast of food in front of them , who knows ...

 

[Julian Griffiths]

That's an interesting point Julian , maybe on the lightly fished stretch the Barbel are liking your bait as its the only bait that's going in the water , hobsons choice, other than any natural food that's around . As for Barbel choosing one bait over another I am not convinced . If there is a lot of bait / feed going in to a popular stretch maybe the Barbel , greedy as they are are just plain full up , just like Mr Creosote [ ref end of Monty Python film ' ''the meaning of Life '' ]. I cannot resist watching some of the plethora of Barbel videos on Youtube , many of these anglers think nothing of chucking in a kilo or more of boilies/ pellets even if only fishing for a few hours ; yes, this tactic may well attract the Barbel in to the area but my possibly flawed logic would say ,the more items of food in the swim the less likely your hook bait is going to get picked up , or would this be countered by the sheer number of Barbel that turn up attracted by the feast of food in front of them , who knows ...

That last point referring to the more bait in the swim the less likely your hook bait is going to get picked up. I would agree on that point totally, on rivers now where barbel numbers are/have decreased significantly.

Trent Wye etc, I beleive you still have some good groups of barbel that will still respond favourably to a good amount of pellet feed.

I use to see guys doing this on my local stretches, god knows how much Pellet was being filled in. Then as they vacated the swim the next chap would repeat the prebaiting.

My tactic, was single boilie over the top, & thanks very much for holding the fish in the area for me!
That worked brilliantly for me for a number of seasons!

Now I fish well away from the known areas, & wished I'd done this move sooner!

 

[Jim Brook]

Agreed - my mate always told me "you could catch a barbel on a wellington boot if it was hungry enough".

It's all about confidence in your bait and how you apply it.

When pellet fishing on the river I use Hinders Elips 95% of the time. I've tried other (3FT, shop-bought stuff) but have never done as well.

The main reason I use the bait I do as I know almost no-one else on the river uses it and I use it pretty sparingly. A 1kg bag of large Elips lasts me an entire season.

I favour the Hinddrs ellipse (salmon feed) pellets because they break down much quicker than Halibut pellets do releasing the attractive oils within and to put it simply “they work”

 

[Jim Brook]

On the point of how much to feed? I sometimes use upto half a kilo of small feed pellets in a session casting every 20 minutes or so catching an average of 6-8 barbel in a session, my friend on the other hand uses around a kilo of feed pellets casting every 5 minutes and catches many more fish than I do his best return this season was 23 barbel in a 5 hour session admittedly where we fish there are numbers of shoal fish to get competing for the feed.

 

[Mike Hodgkiss]

Clearly a lot of Barbel present in the river where you fish Jim , It would be an interesting to see what happened if you didn't feed at all and just fished a single large bait . As for the casting in every 5 mins , well that goes against my instinct to create as little disturbance as possible when fishing , however its patently obvious from your experience that all that casting in and pulling fish out doesn't bother the Barbel at all ! Maybe what you are experiencing here is similar to the commercial fishery tactic of making a commotion / chucking in lots of feed which actually alerts the fish to the fact that grubs up , it's like ringing the dinner bell ? Whatever the case it clearly works . Does the river where you fish get a lot of attention from anglers who feed heavily , perhaps the resident Barbel have learn't to show up or frequent an area where lots of grub gets chucked in on a regular basis ? You would think though that after a while the Barbel might get a little bit edgy when they keep getting hooked / caught .