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Britain's biggest barbel...

The language the ea speak to get on terms with them you have to be positive in the way you communicate as one of there common terms is "perceived decline"
 
Neil from where i am sat in the Thames valley some rivers still appear to be in the halcyon period eg Dove, Derwent, Wye (or is this just the Facebook phenomena)...which brings me back to the point about cycles, these will not last forever. However, i do think there are some rivers in which barbel probably should not be present...as a kid i used to fish the Calder i could never imagine it would ever support barbel, it does...but then i fished the Wharfe at Collingham and thought there should be barbel but caught more grayling than anything else. Rivers should surely have a balance withe the most dominant species being that which is best suited to the conditions - chances are large dominant fish will drive out other species...big fish surely become big as they are the most effective in sourcing food/feeding pushing out others when doing so.
 
Paul Dowgill said:
Neil from where i am sat in the Thames valley some rivers still appear to be in the halcyon period eg Dove, Derwent, Wye (or is this just the Facebook phenomena)...which brings me back to the point about cycles, these will not last forever. However, i do think there are some rivers in which barbel probably should not be present...as a kid i used to fish the Calder i could never imagine it would ever support barbel, it does...but then i fished the Wharfe at Collingham and thought there should be barbel but caught more grayling than anything else. Rivers should surely have a balance withe the most dominant species being that which is best suited to the conditions - chances are large dominant fish will drive out other species...big fish surely become big as they are the most effective in sourcing food/feeding pushing out others when doing so.
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I do wonder just how much our own hand has effected the Barbel population in our rivers Paul, I had a pm from a member on here yesterday mentioning that he has heard of two double figure Barbel that were found dead at Manor Farm on the WA, these fish were found in the reeds by the bank, the thoughts were they had been 'sacked' Ruined my evening that did, killing prime breeding stock at a stroke is hideous, but that is not an isolated incident, all along the 'popular' stretches, where casual holiday anglers fish I am afraid barbel deaths are a common site in the summer, as reported by a Birmingham AA bailiff.

Just how much abuse the Barbel can take without 'upping sticks' I don't know, but there must be some impact on where the Barbel feels safe, the instinct for survival is paramount.

Also talking to another BFW member who has an opinion the the Teme Barbel, in fact (Severn Barbel just visiting), don't seem to enter the Teme in the numbers previously seen, but seem to be more in numbers around the confluence of the Teme, just look at the number of Barbel caught at the BS stretch at Pixham Ferry!! These fish are not single big doubles, but a lot of smaller males which might support the theory.

Just why the Barbel are not in numbers in the Teme is an odd one to ponder, the river has all the attributes you could imagine, it could be a combination of Otter, Floods, Angling pressure, Agricultural, or just cycles, I certainly don't know, or the EA, not they care of course, only the Barbel can tell.

Again the Windrush, Thames, Bristol Avon, although the latter is showing some signs of recovery, until perhaps everyone and his dog descends on her and the Barbel just cannot handle the pressure.

I believe that the answers lie in our own hands as anglers, we can hardly complain and blame the Otter for all our woe's if we don't look after the basics, such as good handling and limiting the number of angler/ rods on the bank.
 
Ian Crook said:
So, guessing you have around a dozen photos of double figure Barbel with chunks missing from their tales, caught from the Kennet to share?
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If you are calling me a liar just say so, i could share pictures but i dont feel the need to justify what i have personally seen to you or anyone else.
 
Neil, Regarding The Lesser Spotted Guide, i would be quite happy to see this (sub) species apparent decline turn into full blown extinction. Luckily where I fish on the Wye the one very high profile chap who was allowed to guide managed to get himself slung off the water by abusing that privilege: hammering the same old swim and a blatant disregard of EA bye laws regarding bait restrictions. What a fine example he was.

The bigger point is that in my opinion guides add more pressure on a water the chief beneficiaries being themselves and the clients. No learning the water, a quick hit in the going swims, not good if it's a club water, though they might buy a book to fish those same swims again which leads to... more pressure.

The trouble with the boom time was that too many people relatively new to barbel fishing expected too much and considered it the norm. I don't seem to remember the fishing being that bad pre "golden years" so if the fishing returns to that, with fewer anglers and fish I for one will not be disappointed.

The EA stockings I think spiked the barbel populations, not necessarily, as others have said, in waters where they would reproduce successfully. Their latest one close to me has been in the River Crane in Twickenham, a river that for a large part of it's course is little more than concrete bottomed storm drain. They stocked it years ago, I said it was wrong then because of it's nature and the fact it's susceptible to pollution. 2/3 years ago it suffered a total fish kill. Now stocked again and do you know what? Bill Rushmer puts in his Anglers Mail report that people are again catching small barbel. As stupid a piece of reckless 'journalism' as you could wish for, almost as stupid in fact as the idiots fishing, not even giving the fish a chance to establish themselves. Or maybe they're just getting in early before the next pollution incident wipes them out.

So throw in abstraction, a couple of kilos of pellets per trip, otters and a catch at all costs mentality amongst some anglers is it any wonder there appears to be decline, at least anecdotally, in barbel numbers in some rivers?

And if you've got some barbel fishing that you're happy with, keep it to yourself because you can guarantee some ****** out there won't give a damn about all your hard work if he can take a shortcut to catching a few fish.

Rant over, not particularly constructive but it's lowered my blood pressure a tad
 
Two rivers I find intriguing in all this are the Dove and Teme. The Dove is a smallish river with otters and plenty of pressure, yet doesn't seem to have suffered the same fate as some.
The Teme, from what I can tell, looks to have been steadily declining for years, then came the floods and that seemed to kill it. I remember speaking to a couple of chaps on the lower Severn, must have been close to 15 years ago, who back then were saying how the barbel fishing had declined from what it was on there.
With the Dove being a natural barbel river and the Teme stocked, could this have any bearing on their current conditions?
 
It's an uncomfortable truth that we have to include ourselves as anglers as one of the threats to a healthy barbel population. The only dead barbel I've seen this season was on the banks of the Wye and while I can't be 100 per cent sure, from all the circumstances I strongly suspect its demise was due to inadequate resting after capture. I've read elsewhere today about two double figure barbel being found dead on a day ticket stretch of the Warks Avon reportedly due to poor handling.

It always makes me uncomfortable when I see reports of anglers catching 30 plus barbel (usually on the Wye) during the course of a morning or afternoon. I don't see how that many fish can be adequately rested in that timescale. Even when it's been a fish a chuck, personally I've struggled to catch more than four an hour once playing and resting has been taken into account.

There's a swim on the middle Wye (and we may be talking about the same one, Antony) that gets hammered day in, day out, to the extent where the river keeper has booked it out on a morning and afternoon basis. I fear the mortality rate in that swim will be high, and sadly for once it will be human predation to blame.
 
Just off the top of my head , and I haven't read back through the thread particularly carefully . Could there be a link between signal crayfish and decline in barbel numbers ? As a generalisation , and I know there are exceptions , the rivers where the barbel are in apparent decline are also the ones where the crayfish have got the strongest hold , I am thinking particularly of the 'Southern '' rivers .I like to read the river reports on here and it is amazing how anglers are hauling in barbel both large , small , and medium size from rivers like the middle Trent , Derbyshire Dove , Ribble and many others , and yet down on the Cherwell , Loddon , Wandle , Thames barbel anglers really struggle . Do the crays eat all the barbel eggs ?
 
Mike Hodgkiss said:
Just off the top of my head , and I haven't read back through the thread particularly carefully . Could there be a link between signal crayfish and decline in barbel numbers ? As a generalisation , and I know there are exceptions , the rivers where the barbel are in apparent decline are also the ones where the crayfish have got the strongest hold , I am thinking particularly of the 'Southern '' rivers .I like to read the river reports on here and it is amazing how anglers are hauling in barbel both large , small , and medium size from rivers like the middle Trent , Derbyshire Dove , Ribble and many others , and yet down on the Cherwell , Loddon , Wandle , Thames barbel anglers really struggle . Do the crays eat all the barbel eggs ?
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Mike,

Barbel recruitment is generally regarded to be healthier on the upper reaches of the Loddon, which does have crayfish, than the lower reaches, which doesn't have crayfish. This is the trouble with this whole business - for every sensible theory, there's an equally sensible counter-theory.
 
Even when it's been a fish a chuck, personally I've struggled to catch more than four an hour once playing and resting has been taken into account.

Bloody hell i am lucky to get that in a season :D
 
Steve,

No it's a different stretch lower down. I think I know where you mean though. A mate of mine tells me he bumps into keeper when he's doing his shopping who quotes the total of barbel and chub caught from the water he 'looks after' umm I'll leave it at that...

Rhys,

Where I fish on the Hants Avon, though unfortunately not yet this season, there are Otters, always have been apparently and yet the Barbel stocks seem to be holding up and the fish are getting bigger. The otters have all but wiped out the carp, made large inroads into the bream and I regularly catch chub with lumps out of their tales and yet the barbel which people say are often the first to go seem relatively untouched. I've seen one dead un and one mauled and dying in 5 years I've fished there. The presence of a huge, filthy, over-abstracting and polluting trout farm that doesn't appear to care about the damage it's causing nearby might at least be doing some good in supplying of ready meals for otters. I don't think the rest of the Avon has been so 'lucky'.

Tony
 
Steve Double said:
It's an uncomfortable truth that we have to include ourselves as anglers as one of the threats to a healthy barbel population. The only dead barbel I've seen this season was on the banks of the Wye and while I can't be 100 per cent sure, from all the circumstances I strongly suspect its demise was due to inadequate resting after capture. I've read elsewhere today about two double figure barbel being found dead on a day ticket stretch of the Warks Avon reportedly due to poor handling.

It always makes me uncomfortable when I see reports of anglers catching 30 plus barbel (usually on the Wye) during the course of a morning or afternoon. I don't see how that many fish can be adequately rested in that timescale. Even when it's been a fish a chuck, personally I've struggled to catch more than four an hour once playing and resting has been taken into account.

There's a swim on the middle Wye (and we may be talking about the same one, Antony) that gets hammered day in, day out, to the extent where the river keeper has booked it out on a morning and afternoon basis. I fear the mortality rate in that swim will be high, and sadly for once it will be human predation to blame.
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30 plus barbel in an afternoon or morning session - it does make you wonder doesn't it? I just can't see how it's possible to do that safely. For a start I usually give a fish 4-5 mins in the net before lifting it out to remove the hook, so that would be 2 - 2.5 hours of the session gone...

And aside from the obvious practicalities, catching 30 in a session would be rather tedious and too much like hard work for my liking. And it wouldn't exactly leave much time to admire the scenery, wildlife, passing female joggers..
 
i have only took a good look at some of the posts here but the good old days to me was when nearly every club outing on the middle and lower thames resulted in barbel banked, not by dedicated specimen men but but regular club members on a weekend days outing with the club, the kennet in particular made the thames seem sparse of barbel which it wasn,t
what did happen however was more and more water being drawn off from the kennet which in turn effected the thames too, then the signal crays gained strongholds on the rivers, and beleive me the bigguns are more than capable of chomping part of a fishes tail off, then the black death came inland again the small fish dissapeared from all species,, ahhh protect the lovely birds,,:mad:
oh and the mink before them on the kennet to begin with, again with screaming protectors meddling in stuff they knew nothing about, in meantime water abstraction was getting more and more, all the deep holes and swims i knew carry little more than a mere trickle these days, thus effecting breeding barbel, chub,dace and grayling, now the bleedin otter lovers again in their ignorance releases god knows how many that aint on the books, and now theyre talking of beavers too, kill em all :mad:
and cause uproar about too much abstraction going on,put the neccesary into building decimated stocks back and things may not too bad after all who else gives a damn about our rivers if it aint fishermen, anyone ever seen an otter lover on the PUBLIC banks with their off spring watching for a glimpse of an otter while the hold their black bag open picking up the rubbish left behind by so called countryside lovers and others,
sorry but had to show my frustration as i am one who does love our riverside and countryside
 
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