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How did your Barbel journey start ?

Kevin Earley

Kevin Earley

Senior Member
For me it was an invitation by an experienced Barbel angler to join him on the River Trent. Had a really enjoyable day talking river fishing and learning, topped by my first river Barbel. As a city kid reading 'Go Fishing with Mr Crabtree' Barbel were a near mythical fish caught from mighty, distant rivers like the Severn & Wye. I am still at the relatively early stages of my Barbel journey and loving every step along the way & glad I haven't lost the appreciation of the king of the river.

So how did your journey begin ?
 
Hi men,

Some of the carp lakes I fished in the 80s had rivers containing barbel and chub around them . Sue used to wander off all day with her stalking gear coming back to me for lunch and cups of tea 😁. At some point whilst her showing my son James fish feeding and catching barbel I started to see a different style , watching fish feeding , very mobile something I was missing .

I eventually cancelled a trip to France and we had a week in the Teme valley , and that led to 10 glorious years bumbling round many rivers , before Sue gave up 🫤, but you never know 😉.

Hatter
 
Catching roach on the Kennet. Superb fish along with cracking herring sized dace. All on hemp and tares.
30 to 40lb of fish often, the roach all over the 1lb.

Mini quill size 18 hook about 2/3rd depth pretty much under the rod tip, and striking the lighting fast bites.

And that's when a 5lb barbel came along.
I was hooked aged about 15
 
I am not sure the Severn and Wye were even stocked with barbel in Mr Crabtree's days!

However, to answer the question. I was in my early teens and a pain in the arse child to take on holiday as I only wanted to spend school holidays with a fishing rod in my hand. A compromise was reached and my parents booked a holiday in Bournemouth and instead of taking part in family activities I was dropped off at The Royalty Fishery in the morning and collected in the evening. This seemed to work and preserve family harmony so the exercise was repeated a second year by which time my angling knowledge had improved and I caught a small barbel on a maggot feeder set up.

That experience got me hooked and the next visit was just prior to my 18th birthday when I made a day trip thanks to acquiring a licence to drive and I had a very good day catching six barbel.

After that it was not until 2012 when to my surprise I discovered my local River Nene held a stock of barbel and having converted to a fly angler a kind friend guided me on a barbel fishing trip. Enjoying success from the outset I have been returned to coarse fishing, almost exclusively targeting barbel locally as well as in the rivers, Wye, Swale, Kennet and Loddon
 
Age 12 trotting for roach perch dace and chub on the free stretches of the Colne in the early 80's - they started to introduce barbel and I started to catch them by accident not design - 2lb hooklengths, size 18 hooks, double maggot = great fun. Then got lucky as a keen angler who lived down the road (friend of my parents) took me under his wing to fish the Kennet with feeders / heavier gear and also introduced me to Tench & Carp fishing on some pretty closed shop syndicate waters . . .still have the Optonic Bamford conversions he donated to me to this day and also an iconic Mitchell 2550RD reel (rear drag was a revelation!)
 
It started some 21 years ago when me (and my colleague back then, Bob Ring) decided to book a a day's guiding with Trefor West.
We travelled from Hertfordshire to meet up with him near Knightwick on The Teme. It was the very first time I was introduced to the joys of Elips pellets.
We both had a brilliant day, picking up plenty of tips on the approach to fishing effectively on "moving water"....something we had long forgotten, having spent so much of our time pursuing still-water species, and to have actually banked at least seven barbel each (no monsters!) we then returned full of confidence!
Having both joined The Barbel Society, we made many trips to their stretches on The Teme and Severn, along with successful outings on The Kennet near Thtatcham.

Ever since that day, I have never ventured out on any River without a supply of Elips, and still fish one specific rod with pva bags/super-glued, hair-rigged Elips.....and they still produce the goods, even now since moving to Merseyside and currently targeting my new venue...The Ribble.

Many grateful thanks, Trefor
 
River swale year 7 at secondary school.
Knew they existed but never thought I’d be good enough to catch one.
Never really targeted certain species back then I just used to slap on a bait and fish for bites.

It all changed after that day.
 
1973, walking the couple of miles( it seemed further) from Broxbourne train station with a friend to fish the LAA stretch below Kings weir on the river Lea. Either light swan shot linked or light waggler fished luncheon meat on a size 12 hook, would catch endless small barbel to just over a pound in weight. Two years later I moved to the Cambridgeshire fens and became distracted with tench, bream and carp. It wasn't until 2007, when I moved to Reading with my wife, where within a couple of months had caught my first doulbe figure barbel on only my second trip to the river Kennet. The next fifteen years has been addicted to fishing for them; however, with the decline in the bio mass of the local rivers it has become harder, I wonder if I still have the patience. I go fishing to catch fish..... Not sit watching a motionless rod tip, on my very limited fishing time (Four to six hours a week).
 
For me it started way back when I was about 13 yrs old, 1965, it would have been, a friend took me to see the Swale at Topcliffe, a very different place then really, the Bull length below the bridge was day ticket and had Barbel that lived just under some nearside bank willows, the willows had some exposed wooden pilings in front of them from years old bankside maintainance . My friend was wading out a few feet and dropping Luncheon meat in front of the pilings , the Barbel were venturing out, snaffling the meat and beggaring off back into the safety of the Willows.
It was real hit and hold stuff which was electric. I did not have any gear up to the challenge at that age, but it started a lifelong almost obsession.

As an aside , the same day I went walkabout and ventured up to the famous Topcliffe Mill wierpool, owned then by a chap called Allan Smart if my memory serves, he owned the mill building on the far bank , and had the access to the once famous “armchair swim” which was a “perch on the right hand side of the pool next to the mill wall, looking upstream, just big enough to put a fold up chair on.
That day the millpool was where I saw Tag Barnes , he was fishing for Pike, I had read about him and his exploits and recognised him straight away. It was almost like meeting royalty for me , I learned so much in an hour watching him, he took time to explain what he was doing and why . It must have been a bit wearing for him covering everything he was doing to a 13 yr old, but he was the gentleman and did not tire.
He did not catch whilst I was there and I have always wondered if he blanked or not that day.

David
 
Seriously, in 2014. I'd caught lots of Barbel when match fishing on the Trent around the turn of the century, but at that time they were just another fish to catch. I did catch a 7lb 3oz Barbel in a match down Cardiac hill at Bladon on 2lb 6oz Bayer and 1lb 1/2 bottom. Came in like a wet sack, and didn't look very good, all pale and anaemic. Went straight back out and hooked another, but that one just steamed off and broke me.

Stopped fishing altogether for ten years or more, I started to fancy having a go at a different style of fishing, something a little more relaxed than match fishing, so joined Burton Mutual and set my stall out to catch a double from the Dove. Took me two and a half years to do it. Now apart from the odd day out pleasure fishing, Barbel fishing is the only fishing I do.
 
Thank you for the responses everyone, I am enjoying reading the back stories behind why we all fascinated with Barbel.

@John Newman I'll have to dig my copy of Mr Crabtree out, my memory is a bit hazy, it may very well have been the Kennet. Growing up in Leicester opportunities to fish a river (apart from the Soar) were nil. Waited until my mid 50's before I had the invitation to fish the Trent.
Have read reports of Barbel from the Nene, I live in Melton Mowbray so may very well have a trip down, although it is hard to resist the Trent when Farndon is only a 35 minute drive away.
 
Just a lovely summers day on the tiny River Windrush. Light legering with a tiny cube of meat. The barbel was in a poor state, full of sores and a bent back, was a horrible sight to be honest. But that was how it started for me.
 
1973 and I was 13, float fishing a cube of meat to an island on a small lake ( think the chub an barbel in there had been knicked from the nearby Swale)
just as it’s getting dark , the float just disappeared ( like they do ;)) and I hooked what I thought was a moving snag , turned out to be my first barbel , only a small one .
The owner of the lake stocked with carp that year and I went on to carp fishing for the next 30 odd years
fell out with carp fishing ( like you do ) and fishing in general but moved to Canada in 2007 and did a fair bit of sturgeon fishing
Returned to the UK last year and took up barbel fishing.
 
I'd always been a 'fish for anything that swims' sort of angler and the only fish that I occasionally specifically targeted were pre-commercial carp, winter pike and gravel pit tench. An older work colleague was obsessed with the Swale in the Topcliffe and Fawdington areas and invited me along to join him on a few trips to target barbel. It was all hemp and casters in those days. I slowly grew into it and started experimenting with what I used in my carp fishing, hair rigs, self-hooking rigs etc., my mentor was generally quite dismissive until my catch rate started to eclipse his own!

Something that I've carried with me now that I'm at my former mentor's age is that you're never too old to learn something new.

I've come out the other side now where I don't do as much barbel fishing as I did 10 years ago, my local Yorkshire rivers are in wonderful form but therein lies the problem. I now go expecting to catch, 30 years ago I'd be buzzing for a week after a 7lb Yorkshire Derwent barbel. A nice problem to have when compared to some parts of the country but I like new challenges to keep myself fresh and thinking.
 
Cycling to fish the River Thames at Victoria Bridge near Windsor c1972. Solid glass leger rod, intrepid reel and a lump of cheese or sausage meat. Countless barbel in the 3-5lb range with the odd 'monster' around 7lb. Happy days.
 
I’ve been fishing on and off since I was about 11. In my junior years I didn’t have access to anywhere that held barbel, so they always held some mystery for me. Fast forward many, many years later got back into angling and living in London heard there were some in the Wandle. Started fishing it Dec 2015 and caught my first one about 7 months later.
 
Moved to Manchester in 2002 and in 2006 my wife suggested a take up a hobby (regretfully, in hindsight) - I used the fish the Bristol Avon as a kid in the late 70s (grew up in Bristol) so turned to angling as my hobby. Following a quick google search found the River Goyt, and barbel (which I'd never caught on the Avon), and caught my first at the end of 2006. I was hooked.
 
I’d love to say it was something that happened in boyhood, but I was in my 40s before I actually caught one. I’d had a few unsuccessful trips to the Hampshire Avon in the middle 80s, where I caught pretty much anything but barbel, then two or three overnight trips to the Thames around Runnymede, where I don’t remember actually catching anything. At that point, I gave up the barbel hunt as a bad job, half convinced they didn’t actually exist!

Skip forward about 10 years to 1998 and something made me want to try again for one of these, in my mind, semi-mythical creatures. I’m blowed if I can remember what now - I hadn’t done that much fishing in the intervening years - but the would be barbel angler in me stirred again for some reason, and August Bank Holiday saw me on the Kennet at Padworth, clutching a new club membership, whatever tackle I could cobble together, some hemp and a tin of meat. I found a small hole in the pretty extensive weeds, in went some hemp and the meat and eventually, to my total surprise, the rod tip slammed round. I was finally connected to an obviously very angry barbel. I’d never felt anything like it and that first fight is a bit of an adrenaline fuelled blur to be honest, though it definitely involved being locked solid in the weeds at least once and me eventually landing a barbel of about 5lb quite some way from where I’d hooked it. It’s happened for me hundreds of times since but that first moment of contact with any size of barbel has never lost anything of that first electric thrill.
 
My Dad was a Barbel angler so I was born into it. In the 60's my Dad would night fish the Kennet at Sulhamstead with his mates Phil and Indian Dave. Fishing for Barbel in the Winter back then was not really done. My first Barbel was lucky 8lb 1 oz fish from the Colne in Jan 1975, which was bigger than my Dads PB at the time. Before all the stockings Barbel were very rare in the Colne. There was a match on and everyone came down to see my fish.
 
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