I remember a red letter winter day a few years ago, it was a classic day when the temperature had risen, not much, but enough to be a tad warmer, no idea of the river water temp at all, but after reading up on winter barbelling on here I followed the advice, and fed plain maggots, in an open end feeder, plugged either end with brown crumb,with a half dozen maggots on a hair rigged maggot clip.
I opted to fish some fast water,normally it would be a quite shallow area, rocky, that was below a wide and deep bend . The river was carrying some extra water probably a foot or so over normal levels, and running off.
The Barbel were going nuts,after an initial period of about ten mins, when I assume the bait was dispersing and attracting them in, I had I think about sixteen, some just a couple of pounds, up to about 7 or 8 lbs , all from about midday fishing into darkness, they were still feeding when I packed up, when the temperature had dropped considerably.
I cant think that I ever had such a day even in classic conditions, they were not particularly large fish, but the sheer quantity, in about four hours was amazing, so that winter for me proved that it can be very rewarding to actually target Barbel in what would be considered cold weather if the conditions are just right .
David