Hunch or Habit?

by Huw James

Huw James 11lb 4oz Throop 8.9.2001 approx 21.30pm on BFM paste

Hunch or Habit?

This article was written some 4 years ago for the Barbel Catchers Magazine Barbus. Whilst the baits are now well known and now superseded and the catches historic, the thought behind the article still holds true and one of the baits, Trigga, has now proved its worth in barbel fishing.

Every year, like many of us, I would search through the angling press & carp mags for the latest “all singing all dancing bait”. The logic is simple….barbel are part of the carp family…essentially (dare I say it) finely honed & evolved “river dwelling carp”. So…if carp take a liking for particular bait then by association this bait may be effective for our quarry.

Feb/March bought the emergence of Nash & Nutrabaits new base mixes..Formula 1 & Trigga. Both had been extensively field tested by carp & river anglers, with the Terry Lampard taking notable catches of chub & barbel on the Wessex rivers with the then under wraps, Trigga. So armed with a bag of the aforementioned mix, its associated liquid & some eggs I managed to make the kitchen disappear in a Harry Potteresque mix of dust & noxious smells whilst concocting this magical potion.

My first trial was on the Stour at Longham on a wet March afternoon just before the end of the season. The large grape sized piece was gently lobbed into the swollen & chocolaty turbulence and allowed to bump gently into a slack. With rod tip held high I patiently waited and before not too long was “rewarded” with a savage tap tap that could only spell one thing. Slime! Yes all 12 inches of it, writhing & wriggling & squirming. Right, ok….so it attracts eels then! One black mark. Re-baiting I lobbed the paste back into the flow and no sooner as it had touched the bottom than a rod wrenching bite pulled the tip steadily round and towards the main flow. A swift firm pull confirmed contact made and fight on. Now experience may have taught us how fish fight. Bream nod, eels wriggle & pull, chub…well chub do what they do! And barbel tend to pull hard & deep with the heart stopping lunges that make our sport so exciting. But this was different. The line tugged & jagged, lunges were erratic and interspersed with air borne somersaults of head shaking intensity. Uh huh, ok then….so it attracts Sea Trout! A beautiful 5 ½ lb tagged fish which was duly photographed & sent on its way….I know…perhaps better shallow fried with butter, almonds & lemon juice…but it was such a beautiful fish and maybe I’m getting soft in my old age but when you hear of the plunder that is exacted from the punt in the Bridge Pool at Christchurch over the season, every little helps.

So the interrupted & somewhat abbreviated season drew to a close with no more barbel to account, the rods lovingly cleaned & packed away for the spring.

At this stage the jury was still out on Trigga. It certainly worked and attracted fish, but the “wrong” sort. What about Formula 1? It smelt different and the base mix seemed to contain nuts & some sort of fish meal. I always make a point of looking through the base mix to see what hasn’t been ground up!

The carp mags were full of pictures of decent fish caught on this new wonder bait and Kevin Nash was naturally trying to convince us that it was the best thing since sliced bread. So the plan was, dare I say it….formulated! A baiting campaign through the tail end of the close season and into the first few weeks. A stretch of the Avon was targeted that allowed easy & fairly unobtrusive access. This stretch had produced in the past and had given me my first ever Avon double, so there was no doubt fish were there and more importantly in the early part of the season. A mixture of 3mm betaine pellets & 14mm F-1 boilies were hand fed into marked swims over a 14 day period right up to June 16^th. Would it work? Traditionally people approached this water with meat, pellets & latterly some of the JB pastes. Would the fish latch onto the F-1?

June 16^th approached wet and windy. The first night was spent holed up in a bivvy trying for tench & carp on one of the local pits. 16 hours later with only one 13lb carp to show for my troubles I moved onto the river ready to spring the trap.

The Avon at the start of the season always holds an air of timeless rustic charm. The banks so devoid of life & vegetation in March are once more resplendent in their early summer gown of waist high grasses and sedge. The river almost seems to shrink & narrow as the banks encroach over the water, creating runs & glides underneath the overhanging reeds, providing cover shelter for our bronzed quarry. This idyllic & ageless scene is soon defiled by the hoards of reed stamping anglers and hungry heifers that flatten the banks & fields removing any chance of a stealthy roving approach. But until that time, I enjoyed the beauty & grace of the legendary river as it meandered through the early summer meadows as it has done since time immemorial.

The spirits of Mr Crabtree and Peter were right there as I imagined the words chub & barbel written on the gravely river bed indicating the lairs of my hunted prize.

Early season tactics are fairly straightforward. My standard tackle is a 12’ Shimano Technium Specialist (Now sadly RIP…but that’s a story!), centrepin, 8lb Maxima and enough lead to hold bottom well..usually 1-2oz. Terminal tackle this year has been the new Kryston Mantis or the ESP Fluoro in 10 or 12lb. Hook is a Raptor 6, 7or 8 tied knotless with a small piece of cork selflessly sacrificed from a bottle of Aussie Shiraz, affixed to the hair. Well it would be rude not to drink it, wouldn’t it? I tend to use the fluoro in daylight swapping to the Mantis or Snakebite at dusk. The swim is selected and the protecting reeds are gently parted & tied back on themselves. Well we wouldn’t want everyone knowing exactly where I’m fishing. The bait is lowered under the rod tip and the ‘pin put onto its ratchet. Time to wait……and wait………….but alas this time, it just didn’t happen. No knocks , no taps, no trembles. Its early days you tell yourself, maybe not the right swim, maybe…just ..maybe…. Your confidence dips, not markedly, but it dips. The “Specialists” never blank, the AT & the AM are full of dour faced anglers holding high their prize catch, the articles describe how fish just jump out onto the bank when they wet their lines and anyway isn’t this bait supposed to do exactly what it says on the tin? There is always tomorrow you tell yourself, maybe..just maybe….

The baiting campaign continued for another 10 days…every other day, pellets & boilies gently added into the serene summer flow. Time to reflect, time to try again.

Same swim, same tactics, same bait, same time. Confidence was still high but to counteract that nagging doubt I added a few boilies of another flavour to the bait box, something that I hadn’t tried on this stretch for 12 months and hadn’t even introduced this year. Habit or hunch?

At times like this I will often fish with 2 rods. One with my “main” bait and the other as a trial with another bait. This is a way of making a direct comparison of the two, fished side by side under the same weather & water conditions. The theory is that if Mr Barbus swims along feeling a little peckish, he has a choice and hopefully his predilection for a particular bait will advise me of the wisdom of my choice!

That evening three long, warm, summer hours passed, accompanied only by the distant sound of traffic winding their weary way home, back from the beaches, the offices, the parks, and the hustle & bustle of riverbank life. Graceful swans paddling serenely by, bolshie mallard squabbling & squawking, grebes ducking & diving in search of an evening snack and the glistening iridescent blur of blue & orange as a kingfisher streaks homeward. Alas, still no movement of the rod tip. Do I move? Do I try something different? Impatience & the past get the better of me….off goes the F-1, out comes the Ice Red. Same swim, different bait. 50 minutes later a 5-4 chub and a 9-7 barbel are testament to the change. A day later a 6-3 chub follows and the next day a 5-10 chub & a 10-3 barbel complete a very satisfying weeks evenings fishing. The F-1 is ditched, Ice red is brought back into the frame and over the course of the 2 month campaign fish barbel of 9-7, 10-3,6-9, 6 & 7-8 are landed along with chub of 5-4, 5-10, 6-3, 6-1 & numerous others to 5 lb.

Habit or hunch? Why did I change? I don’t know…I just cant put my finger on it. I think it’s a confidence thing. Ice Red has done well for me and has caught consistently on both rivers over a number of years. Did I fall back on it because of past results? If I had stayed & tried would F-1 come into it’s own? The main problem we have in angling is that perhaps we try and over complicate the problem. Angling is not and hopefully never will be an exact science. We cannot set up a controlled experiment to determine which minor change makes the most difference. Angling is hugely multifactorial. Can we duplicate the exact same atmospheric pressure, air temp, water temp, moon phase, weather pattern, water colour, which will all potentially affect our catching, even before we start to think about bait, hooklink length, weight, hook pattern etc etc. Some of what we do is habit, it has worked for us before and continues to work for us again. Other things are a hunch. Maybe just a little longer hooklink, maybe just a slightly different combination of additives in my bait. Often we will only “feel” the reason to do it. We often cannot out into words exactly why we decided to change swim, or bait or hooklink but we do, as if by a 6^th sense. Sometimes its those hunches, that 6^th sense that makes all the difference …what Steve Withers often calls my notorious lucky 1^st cast. It’s a hunch why I choose a particular swim over another, maybe I am subconsciously choosing what my fishing buddy, Dave would call a banker swim. I don’t know…but that “feeling”, that “ hunch” has led to 5 doubles from Throop this year, often getting a run within minutes of casting in to a particular spot.

It’s what makes this wonderful pursuit of ours so enticing, so attractive. Maybe its habit, maybe it’s a hunch but by God it’s wonderful when it all comes together in a perfect combination of muscle, fins & scales of a glistening bronzed bullet.