Graham Elliott

Budgie. Not if you are leaving it on for a pike to snaffle. Use a wire trace. Graham

For barbel a 7.9 bottom and 10.1 mainline normally. For chub 6.6 straight through. Graham

I use Silstar Team England (or Match can't remember) Blue Spool and face with team on front? - Down shed too cold! - Found it piccy They do it in 6.6 / 7.9 and 10.1 b.s. Its the best line I have ever used and has the low diameter but suppleness to lay and come of the spool wonderfully. It needs line float on it for long term use. The 6.6 is for chubbing and the 7.9 to 10.1 for barbs. I find braid can become a bit waterlogged with constant trotting, also I do a lot of holding back and line mending so I am in good contact all the time with the end tackle, usually shirt button unless fast rivers targetted then often semi stret pegging with bulk shotting inches or so from the hook. Chub with size 6 drennan crystal hook with flake. Fine wire and longish shank, very sharp and pull though bread easily on the strike. My barbel trotting is either same hook but size 4 for meat or drennan carbon size 12 for tares/16 for caster. Never below 7.9 line for me. Graham

Jeeps. Yes I use braid straight through for legering. I use mono when trotting, but then again all my trotting is the stick /avon etc float not waggler etc. The majority of pins have an adjustable drag setting by altering the clutch (if they have one) or the round screw like twisty thingies on the inner drum spindle. Graham

With a softish rod and trotting with a decent length of line out you should be Ok with a Mono link to braid. BUT......believe me, the mono link will try to absorb all the stretch on a short line and ..Crack... it will go just like that on a lunge or sudden hard pull, especially under the rodtop. If you must use mono hooklength, I reckon you need about twice the bs of the braid to be safeish. If you are using a pin for the first time and barbel/carp fishing on a short line be sure to slacken the drag a little as a Teme type bite can crack you off before the pin has caught up. You don't have to believe me, but speaking from hard learnt experience from self other anglers coming for lessons. Graham

I'll be there on the day the Barbel Society have a forum discussion. Hope to meet a few of you AnglersNet members. Introduce yourself. I'll be the old one with the very grey hair! Graham

Cheshire Regional Meeting #460468 - 24/10/05 08:48 PM Graham Elliott will be the next speaker at the Cheshire meeting on Friday the 25th November.This will be held at a NEW VENUE which is JUNCTION 17 SOCIAL CLUB (FORMERLY KNOWN AS SANDBACH UNITED SERVICES CLUB) BRADWALL ROAD, SANDBACH.There will be the usual tackle stands and raffle prizes up for grabs. Doors will be open at 7pm for 8pm start. A bar is available.Entrance fee is £3 for society members and £5 for non-members. Juniors are welcome and will be admitted free. I will be giving a talk on Barbel catching and how to target the biggest fish. it will be good to see any AnglersNetters that can make it. Come and say hello and introduce yourself to a friendly bunch. Graham Elliott

Very good point Steve regarding the Nutrients being added to the water. I wonder if the same factors that have enabled humans to live longer and become larger and taller over the past 50 years have a bearing on fish sizes?? Theres a thought? Anyway. Another 2 barbel Virgins less today with fish of 11.2 /10.00 /9,4 and 8.1 coming from a Thames tributary. This is my site for a few nice barbel pics if anyone fancies a look. www.anglingexperience.co.uk Graham

Natures Cycles, Budgie. Comorants are just another form of predation in the cycle. They won't be around if not many small fish to eat. Yes Lee, but since it has had more anglers fishing it over the past few years the bigger fish are coming out. 17lber last season for example and 15's / 16's already this year. That old prime roach water of yours has now become a barbel water. ( Of course you knew that!) Betcha the roach will be back in force a few years down the line. Cycles. Neglect certainly has a big bearing Steve, but hope you agree, so has fish handling and the awareness by Groups such as The Perchfishers, BS. Carp S etc.etc. Of course I agree (As I did) that the warmer temperature cycles have a big bearing in growth promotion, when they are not comotose they are often eating. Graham

Sloger I don't think we are far apart in our views on the factors. I was taking your example 1/ in isolation. and quoting the example of where it doesn't hold true..in isolation. What is true is the handling factor and not mentioned before but included regards advancement in angling practices. Take barbel as an example. 40 years ago Col Crow, RW et al reported seeing barbel around 20lb at (I think) Ibsley on the H.Avon. The fact is the Barbel records x3 held at 14.6? for many many years were pretty much caught by salmon anglers with proper tackle. Even when I Pike fished (Nearly said pedunkle there...) standard tackle was 6lb line. We lost some monsters!!! Expertise is much greater now and so is the tackle used. For example a big barbel that comes out of The Kennet at LBenyons probably accounts for at least 30 Kennet anglers trophy shots....yet how many times would it have been damaged and ultimately killed in the standard keepnet practice of 10-15 years ago, if ever landed with the standard 2lb bottom on the float 15 years ago. Tackle Advances etc. give a false impression to a degree. Still the original Thames question. was their also a mini heatwave 100 years ago when the Thames anglers had 1000 lobs put in a swim to catch shoals of barbel for food? They didn't have much chance to grow. Perch I never look anymore but when were the last 3 biggest Perch records established. Methinkspossibly a fair time ago. But I might be wrong. Didn't a few biggies come out about 30+ years ago to FJT and RW when the Arsely bomb was developed? Graham

Slodger. My thoughts use to be very much as your own however... 1/ The fish grow pretty big in those puddles where they are side by side although 2/ will have an effect I think this factor is very minor. 2/ Yes, no doubt on small, low density waters the bait factor has an effect.....but on the Thames? With all those fish where one Bream shoal can polish off a hundredweight of feed in an hour or so. Also in general over the past 10 years on avarage each angler on the Thames has had about a mile of the river each. 3/ Yes, must have had an impact, but in reality global warming is not a decade thing, although the winters have been very mild for a long time now and no doubt this has had an influence. 30 years ago I was catching near 2lb roach in dozens on the Kennet, at last they are coming back with fish over 1lb in the lower reaches now appearing. I suspect that we will see a gradual decline in Barbel over the next 30 years or so. Nature loves it's cycles. I think one of the key changes must be the general improvement in fish handling by anglers allowing more fish to mature to a greater size /weight. many of todays big fish are caught frequently and not taken home as a trophy or a cookup! 25 years ago the idea of dressing fishes wounds would have been laughed at. Mind you will still see those fish crushed into keepnets for the photo shoot. Just not so often and more with "Commodity" fish. Graham

Hello Budgie. Heard you left those pussys (is that allowed?) alone and back to P's. IMHO (yeah!) The only major change to the Thames over the past 20 years is the sudden return of the large numbers of silver fish over the past 2 seasons. Anyone from the Soho Loop area or Kingston will tell you that 20 years ago 50lb bags of roach and dace were common...if you could get past the bleak! There always have been and always will be large shoals of very large bream present. Perch disappeared as elsewhere due to that disease and were the first to reappear in good size 5-6 years ago. Pike found places to live away from boats and have been growing in size to the pair of 30lbers I saw caught a couple of years ago. Barbel have always been in large numbers in the Thames, just reading books like "The River Prince" will confirm that. The river did doubles a hundred years ago, just that spun gut wasn't very good at catching them... Carp were not that prevalent, but some people like to add them to rivers and it has held a good head of 30's for some seasons now. No, its just a cyclic thing, probably enhanced till the predators increase, they eat the fry, the fry disappear, the predators reduce, the fry grow etc........etc......... Graham.

Best to say. Kennet, Loddon, Thames etc. and leave it at that if possible. Lee, I actually took out two policemen from Essex barbel fishing last Wednesday. Great guys and we had a real hoot about PC, especially the decision of the Thames Valley and Met police not to allow any white intakes for another 5 years until "targets" are met. Seems fair to me. They caught barbel as well up to 13.1. Now they really were the barbel police. ps. Boat bought and I'm heading towards the Hook! It's nearly Xmas and those Peduncles will be in big demand now Eastern Europe starts at Dover. ---- sorry Pickerels. Graham

Sorry, forgot to include the 9.12 and 11.1 barbel we had as well. Agree with you Wordbender. Unfortunatly on the way there yesterday I passed a fly tipped load of cut trees and debris in a railway siding. Another indication of the "travellers" consideration towards normal people. Still I am sure the public paid for DVD listing their "rights" will help out a lot. Incidently. I consider a Romani to be those quaint little horsedrawn carriages with lots of china in the window and people with respect for the land. The others I consider little more than SXXXE Graham

The Thames is certainly a wonderful river. Fishing a tributary yesterday with 2 customers we managed barbel of 13.1 / 10.14 /10.12 and an 8lber. This bit of water was pristine, clean and had wonderful fauna. Last week some "travellers" moved into a field opposite. The river path is now littered with plastic bags full of excrement and smeared paper adorns the path for a 100 yard area. I don't know what you call these sort of people. Graham