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Peaty Blankers

Paul Richardson

Paul Richardson

Senior Member & Supporter
Hello everyone.I've just joined the forum and this is my first post.
I'm also relatively new to barbel fishing, having been a hardcore piker for many years, but my circumstances changed and I moved from the fertile hunting grounds of East Yorkshire( River Hull/Barmston Drain) back to North Yorkshire and so my fishing changed.And how.
Currently I fish the Swale almost exclusively and have to say I love it. I've had some nice pike off the Swale but they are hard won,and to be honest I've caught more specimen chub whilst piking than I have pike! However..barbel.And I still can't work out how a 5-6lb barbel fights harder than a 15lb pike - buts that's another story, and one that my piker friends refuse to believe.
Having never really encountered this phenonema before I'm after some advice on peaty water in the river.It really does seem to be the kiss of death when 'tea-coloured' water comes into the river. I have tried changing my tactics and fish natural baits but to no avail, tried rolling baits, smelly baits, small baits - nowt.The fish are there and crash about but just don't seem interested in feeding. This has lead to the above 'Peaty Blankers' nickname for a number of us.
Presumably other people experience this on the spate rivers?
Out of interest can anyone shed any light on why this happens with the fish and is there any tactic worth employing , other than fish a stillwater/ different river until the colour drops out?
Cheers
 
Welcome to the forum Paul . The peaty tea coloured river conditions almost always occur when the river is low and the water is [ relatively ] clear . In my experience the barbels lack of willingness to feed , certainly in the daytime and at this time of the year when it is warm isprimarily down to the high water temperature . Your best chance of connecting with a barbel in these conditions is to fish at dusk / in to dark and at dawn when the water temperature is lower. I think that with regard to spate rivers, low clear conditions combined with very high ,[or in winter very low] water temperatures are not the best time to get your barbel gear out . Although our beloved barbel are not the brightest of fish , clear conditions also mean that they are better able to see the angler and his tackle .
 
Loving the title Paul and welcome to the site! I've no scientific evidence to back this up, but it may just be simply down to timing. If the river has been up and coloured, this has got to be when the fish have been gorging on the available food being washed down: particularly as they will feel safe to come out of their hiding places because they can't be seen. Once sated, they are unlikely to want to feed as the river fines down....and on the Swale, that inevitably means that horrible peaty colour and all that we've come to associate with it. Someone else may have a different view. Either way, the fishing is hard work in such conditions.
 
Mike seems to have hit the nail on the head, the Ribble is similar, low conditions, a bit of rain and it looks like tea.... I have had good catches in such conditions, but only after dark, usually to smelly baits, Garlic Spam or glugged pellets.Strange, but looking at my catch records only had fish in those conds up to about midnight, then the river goes to sleep.
Daytime fishing no good.

Try for a big river Pike, they must be more muscular than those from East Yorks Drains / River Hull,they are almost still waters compared to the Swale.
Tag Barnes used to really rate the Swale for big Pike, and he was the Gord Burton of his times.

Dave
 
David Craine said:
Try for a big river Pike, they must be more muscular than those from East Yorks Drains / River Hull,they are almost still waters compared to the Swale
Click to expand...
David, to be a bit pedantic I think you'll find that as a Chalk Stream (and tidal in its lower reaches) the Hull has a more consistent and higher flow than the Swale in all but raging torrent conditions
 
Daryl,I walk the Hull, and have fished the Swale in quite a few different conditions over the years, and I can say that the Swale has imo a greater flow, maybe the best person to say is the OP, who obviously has the best comparison.... If I am wrong I will apologise , but I dont think that will happen.

Dave
 
I always wondered if it is down to a change in pH as the peat is washed down from the head waters of the Swale, just a theory. The Tees is permanently tea coloured but I suppose it is the norm for the barbel population.
 
I fish for Pike from October to March come the 16th of June I fish for Barbel and Chub.
I have fished the Swale twice this season only had one Chub.
 
Welcome Paul,
I think my esteemed colleagues are giving the right advice. A fining down river and high water temps, are not good conditions.
I would try crack of dawn and freeline or use a small lead and long hook length and wait for a bite.
Looking at the forecast conditions should improve when the storm goes through mid-week.
Mike
 
Thanks everyone
Re timing - I invariably go after work and always fish into dark( some late nights at the moment) and have done a few overnighters with very little activity in darkness and normally a chub frenzy at first light.I think the guy who mentioned acidity or Ph might be onto something and I have heard this mentioned but am curious as to whay and can it be countered?
Re pike - that was a bit of a glib comment, but I genuinely think a smaller barbel does probably fight harder than your average low-mid river double pike and I promise you I have caught a lot of them. It's the pure aggression that gets me and the snag finding ability.As a lot of you will know big pike use their mass to keep low in the water and it's a war of attrition until they tire, but once they're hooked good n proper they rarely cause a fuss( in my experience)
Re Hull vs Swale - I have fallen in the river Hull a few times, but would never, ever want to fall in our stretch of the Swale!! Upstream the Hull is relatively sedate on normal tides
but as you get toward Tickton/Beverley it is a lot mot more tidal and if you hook a big fish in this stretch on a decent tide, you have a great fight with the fish & current but so very different to barbel.That really was my point. I was warned and better warned about having my rod pulled in, and brushed it aside as I had handled hundreds of large pike.Let's just say I'm glad I played a bit of cricket as a youth as them instincts saved me a rod last season.Lesson Learned.
 
Paul Richardson said:
Thanks everyone
I think the guy who mentioned acidity or Ph might be onto something and I have heard this mentioned
Click to expand...

Yeah, Stuart made a good point there - as a winter piker myself, historically targeting the drains on the Somerset levels where there is quite a lot of peat, I've wondered similar. It was always hard going for pretty much any species after some prolonged wet periods washed any loose peat into the water courses (which would typically be in summer and early autumn, until the colder and damper conditions compacted the peat again).

Unfortunately, I can't offer any answers as to how to combat it, but in such conditions, the levels were invariably totally void of anglers, so the locals obviously knew something.
 
Paul, though I don't fish those rivers, I too think that the pH change Stuart mentions is probably behind the problem. Talking from an angler's point of view, it can't have escaped anyone's notice that fish like continuity, they don't like changes in their environment, and they most certainly don't like sudden changes. If the river is a chalk stream, then it will have a natural alkaline nature, whereas the brown peaty influx will be acidic.

From an aquarists viewpoint, I know just how critical that difference can be. It's far easier in a tank to notice the stress a sudden change in pH can cause, and it isn't pretty. Obviously, the fish in these rivers will be far more adapted to changes in pH than others, because it must happen in such rivers regularly. However, they will still almost certainly react unfavourably for a while right after the pH change first occurs.

There is no way you can combat it, other that waiting for a few days to allow things to settle down.

Cheers, Dave.
 
Paul, do the trout in the Swale feed in such conditions? I grew up fishing the peaty mountain streams of West Wales and the tea/beer coloured water after a spate was absolutely unbeatable for the wild trout, particularly if spinning. And the hotter the weather the better..
 
Hi Guys
Thanks for your replies.
It sounds like it could be the acidity, as I noticed that when it's at it's worst, virtually nothing feeds( coarse fish) as maggots, worms, micro-pellets in the margins go untouched; normally they are mullered by fry in seconds.
I don't fish for trout so not sure about them , but as I said big bunches of worm go untouched.
As it happens it is starting to come good, with a few nice fish coming out but nothing like the consistency of last season where plenty of smaller 5-7lb fish were a regular sight.
On a different note there seems to be a lot more chub in the river, and honestly the average size is 4+ - a number of us have had some great catches when targetting barbel - boilies, long-hairs, etc - I had 15 out to 7-2 including 2 over 5 and the majority over 4 in a session a few weeks ago.
A lot of commentators mention chub move in as sentinels, then the barbel move in to feed as confidence increase. My experience has been the opposite this season with smaller barbel quite early in the session , then these big chub move in and barbel seem to dissapear.
Now I'm not complaining as I love chub, and never thought I'd see a 7lber in my net, but they're rarely that easy to catch and the constant twang of the rod tip when targetting barbel can be frustrating to say the least.
Is this possible, has anyone experienced the chub ' muscleing out' barbel?
 
When the Swale runs like stewed tea, I tend to look for an alternate venue. I certainly don't travel far looking for barbel. I'd rather muck around trotting the higher reaches for the much more obliging grayling with dace and the odd trout thrown in. Despite it still being fairly difficult, I'd far rather fish the Swale when it's ridiculously low and clear. However, you can occasionally catch fish in the stewed tea. A decent summer flood is what I really look for. High enough to put most anglers off and leave some of the busy stretches relatively quiet. The stewed tea colour only seems apparent when you get modest rainfall up the dale. Far better to have little to no rainfall and a clear river or plenty of rain for a good chocolate brown.

Strangely enough, as Stuart B mentions, the Tees usually runs like stewed tea, probably due to the influence of the multiple reservoirs that Swaledale just doesn't have. It never seems to get as painfully low and clear as the Swale can. The fish in the Tees don't seem to switch off in such conditions as Swale fish do. Unfortunately, Tees barbel seem to be rather thin on the ground. I don't tend to fish the Tees a lot, until this year I only had access to one relatively short stretch. I'm also yet to specifically target Tees barbel. The seeming dearth of fish and tales of woe from regulars puts me right off. Besides, the dace and big perch keep me well entertained.
 
A sudden influx of peaty water could well be the problem, as Dave say's fish are very sensitive to changes in their environment. pH could be the issue, but it also very likely that the peat-stained water is bringing with it other pollutants that also impact upon the fish.

I've never fished the Swale, but I do know that a fair proportion of the upper catchment (the watershed) is covered by grouse moors, which in the last few decades have seen a marked increase in the intensity of management. Gone are the days when grouse shooting was the preserve of the landed aristocrats who placed an emphasis on quality rather than quantity - now it's all about overpaid investment bankers arriving by helicopter and shooting as many birds as possible in as little time as possible -they don't even have to walk between the butts.

In order to increase grouse numbers, the moors are now being burnt much more frequently, and in some cases areas of blanket bogs are being drained in order to encourage more heather (grouse feed on the shoots of young heather).

In the past very little work has been done to quantify the impact of heather burning on water quality, however last year the results of the EMBER Project were published - a comprehensive five-year study which assessed the impacts of prescribed vegetation burning by comparing five burned and five unburned river basins and 120 soil plots across the English Pennines. The EMBER project compared the hydrology, water chemistry, soil properties and aquatic ecosystems of these burned and unburned areas (see link below).

Some of the findings were:

[*] Rivers draining burned catchments were characterised by lower calcium concentrations and lower pH relative to rivers draining unburned catchments.

[*] Rivers draining burned sites had higher concentrations of silica, manganese, iron and aluminium compared to unburned catchments.

[*] The research found that river macroinvertebrate diversity was reduced in burned sites (macroinvertebrates play a vital role in aquatic food webs by feeding on algae, microbes and detritus at the base of food chains before they themselves are consumed by birds, fish and amphibians)

[*] Particulate organic matter (predominantly peat) deposits were increased up to four-fold in the bed sediments of burned rivers compared to unburned rivers.

[*]In burned sites, river macroinvertebrate populations were dominated by groups that are commonly found in higher abundance in disturbed river systems, such as non-biting midge larvae (Chironomidae) and burrowing stonefly larvae (Nemouridae).

[*] Increases in the abundance of disturbance-tolerant taxa counteract declines and/or losses amongst some groups (e.g. mayflies) which are typically sensitive to reduced pH, increased aluminium and deposition of fine sediments.

So with all that in mind it wouldn't be hugely surprising that the fish get turned-off, I wondered if anyone has noted this phenomenon getting worse in the last decade?

The EMBER report was part funded by Yorkshire water who are having to spend millions on cleaning up the water running off these moors - a cost they have to pass onto the consumer. It gets even worse when you consider the fact that the tax-payer is subsidising many of these commercial grouse shoots through subsidies originally intended to support the farming industry. Some shoots owners are now raking in over £100k a year in subsidies paid for by the tax-payer. In an age when people are queuing up for food banks, just how wrong is that?!

Anyway, as an aside, I recently read that 40-50 years ago, spate events on the Swale took around 3 days to rise and about the same to run-off. These days the river can can rise up to spate in under a few hours. Apparently rises of 3m have been recorded in as little as 20 minutes!

http://www.wateratleeds.org/fileadmin/documents/water_at_leeds/Ember_report.pdf
 
Chris makes an important observation about rainfall and colour. Modest amounts of rain on the upper catchment will be draining straight off the moors..hence the peaty colour. Heavy rainfall everywhere (for example when a warm front moves from west to east) will mean that the water pushing through at the start of a flood/raised level will be from the lowland areas. The colour will be the result of sediment being lifted/eroded from the banks and give the river that chocolaty appearance. Fish tend to feed. As this water moves through and is followed by the drainage water from the uplands (many hours later), the river starts to drop and the that tea-stain colour signifies this. Joe's analysis information gives plenty of information as to why the fish may not be in the mood to feed at this time.

It would be interesting to see if one of the regulars could take a jar with them when the river is 'up' and take a sample. Let the sediments fine down and see what colour the water is. Do the same when the river is dropping back to almost it's normal level and see how the colour compares.

Edit: I should also have added...I wonder what effect the release of water from reservoirs has on water colour and feeding?
 
Fascinating stuff from all but Joe you are correct on so many fronts.
I live on the edge of the NY National Park so know exactly the types you allude to.I do a bit of rough shooting/vermin control and whilst I could never afford to go grouse shooting, I did get invited to a commercial duck shoot that had it's fair share of bankers/hedge fund managers who flew in for the day.
Frankly it was carnage with hand reared ducks having to be literally kicked off the stock ponds into flight to be shot at, they do a loop and fly back towards the ponds where they go through another barrage.Not my idea of sport.
And they were rubbish shots and some plain dangerous...But alas money talks.
So it sounds like we'll have to grin and bear it, and simply get on now as much as we can, cos presumably it will get worse before it ever gets better.
Another barbel blank last night, but who knows what this evening holds...
 
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