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What the........!

Neil Blood

Neil Blood

Senior Member
I wished I’d taken photos of this, as I’m sure friends don’t believe me.....

I really enjoy fishing huge hookbaits for Barbel and especially half a tin of spam. It’s been on my mind for a while that when a Barbel takes such a large hook bait, does it eject it during the take/fight, thus providing a substantial meal for the next Barbel in the swim, meaning you won’t catch the next fish?

So last night I used a soft dacron hooklength, I was experimenting on the basis, that dacron is such a soft material, it wont have a cheese wire effect on the meat. When I landed my first Barbel, I was surprised to see that the fish had spat the large hookbait up the dacron hooklength. Second fish landed and the same happened; after unhooking the fish, I pulled the half tin sized bait off the hooklength and I could have used it again, what the hell?????

Can someone explain the physics of how 2 Barbel get hooked and spit the large sized meat hookbait up the hooklength? It makes no sense, as surely the only way a Barbel can do this, is to suck the buried hook out of the base of the hookbait, which is nonsense, I just can’t get my head around it?
 
I had a small barbel on a matchbox size piece of meat the other day, it had nibbled the end bit, where the hook was, the rest was up the line.
Was that similar to you Neil, or was it untouched?
 
Iv had a fair few fish where the meat has come up the hooklink and Iv just pulled it down and recast and caught again. Never had it happen 2 fish on the bounce though
 
We are talking big baits, 100 gram+ size (Half a tin), with a size 2 hook pulled through with a baiting needle (no hair rig). Fished on a long drop bobbin and centrepin. You’d expect the hook to pull through the meat, to hook the fish, so how does the meat end half way up the hooklength in the landing net with the fish? The meat looks virtually untouched?
 
Derek Funcks said:
They swallow the lot, feel the cold of the metal hook in the back of their throat, blow everything back out, but the hook gets caught on the way out. Meat ends up the line. Simples 🤪 :p🤣😂😁👍
Click to expand...
Sounds perfectly logical to me.
I’ve never had it happen before. In fact I honestly can’t say I’ve ever gotten the bait back at all With a fish using meat
 
Ive had it happen a few times when putting meat straight on the hook, and also had it quite often when fishing marshmallows for carp, again, straight on the hook.
 
Maybe as they give a powerful suck, less resistance in their mouth than the large lump of meat, the hook and line with little or no resistance, is sucked out of the meat. ?

Only guessing tho 👍
 
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Sounds like a reasonable explanation to me. Why the bait is not damaged (for reuse ☺️) is the mystery. Is there not even a small amount of bait damage, as that would seem to render the explanation a plausible one?
 
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