barbel advice recieved

[happypiker]

Hi, guys a while back i asked for info on catching Barbel, got plenty and today after work i bagged my first ever, not massive, bout 3.5 lbs but well worth the wait. Fished the canal at St Astier for 2 hrs and got zilch, packed up and walked 200 mtrs to river, lobbed in method feeder with sweetcorn tipped with maggot and wahoo time 10 mins later.

Guys many thanks for your help, now that i have broke my duck perhaps i can concentrate on refining my tackle/attitude to these demons and give them a real going over.............BARBEL BEWARE.....

[Dick Dastardly]

Nice one mate! I struggled to catch barbel with any consistency from the Saone when I lived in France but when you got among them it was great.Just dont think there were that many in the areas I fished.

 

Be even harder now as the last time I was home the river was alive with 4lb pastie carp and it was hard to get through them to the tench,barbel and bream!

[starlight]

i was working close to the river lot in france the other week, so i fished every evening. i was fishing quite a fast shallow swim that looked very barbelish. i was fishing for carp and managed 2 commons, one at 13 and a lovely 24 pounder, both on tigers over maize. all the while i had been baiting another swim that i planned to do the whole night in before i returned home. it was above a wier and very deep slow and carpy looking. the prebaiting worked a treat! i was up all night, barbel after barbel after barbel!!!! all between 3 and 5 pounds, i stopped counting after 10, in all my years barbel fishing i never had a sess like that! all on tigers, not good sport on 15 pound line. try a bit of prebaiting happy piker, a big sack of maize is only about 9 euros, bet you will have them climbing up your rod!

[happypiker]

Hi, i've got maize growing here by the fieldfull right at the back of my house, should i presume to boil for two to three hours ?? Any additives i should try to add and if so when....at the boiling stage of as a pre bait soak

[starlight]

hi happy piker, just boil it up for an hour or so. i normally boil it and then leave it in the water to soak on. the longer it soaks for the better as you start to get a nice goo develop that i reckon the fish love, as for additives i really dont think that it is necessary, i think the maize has all the pulling power that you need. be warned though, if there is bream about they will get on it as well.

good luck

[dapper64]

thats great, I've haven't caught a barble yet but its not through lack of trying.Ive been out five times now specificly fishing for barble and I've had bream with boilies,eels and chub with the luncheon meat,perch with the lob worms and more chub with casters and maggots,Ive caught nothing with hallibut pellets .yesterday there was a pike hanging about in my swim so I put a plug on on my spare rod and caught it straight away .I suppose my time will come eventually but when do barble stop feeding?.

[Errrm]

thats great, I've haven't caught a barble yet but its not through lack of trying.Ive been out five times now specificly fishing for barble and I've had bream with boilies,eels and chub with the luncheon meat,perch with the lob worms and more chub with casters and maggots,Ive caught nothing with hallibut pellets .yesterday there was a pike hanging about in my swim so I put a plug on on my spare rod and caught it straight away .I suppose my time will come eventually but when do barble stop feeding?.

 

Atleast it's not just me struggling to catch my first Barbel! I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, I'm legering with a inline 2oz lead with hair rigged halibut pellets, I think one problem was not getting the bait around the hook so I'm going to try a small PVA mesh of pellets next time I think ( is this likely to be a good idea? ) Although I have been told that you can expect to blank there i.e. not lots of barbel but they are 15lb+ there. Also how do you get around weed gathering around the lead and pulling it down stream?

 

Errrm

[dapper64]

Atleast it's not just me struggling to catch my first Barbel! I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, I'm legering with a inline 2oz lead with hair rigged halibut pellets, I think one problem was not getting the bait around the hook so I'm going to try a small PVA mesh of pellets next time I think ( is this likely to be a good idea? ) Although I have been told that you can expect to blank there i.e. not lots of barbel but they are 15lb+ there. Also how do you get around weed gathering around the lead and pulling it down stream?

 

Errrm

I used a bait dropper to put down a bed of hemp and few free offerings of the hook bait and waited and waited and waited.I think the problem is finding them ,if they're not there you wont catch them.I dont know how to stop the weed gathering on the ledger, I can only imagine it will get worse now the leaves are dropping as well.which river you fishing and where?

[Errrm]

I used a bait dropper to put down a bed of hemp and few free offerings of the hook bait and waited and waited and waited.I think the problem is finding them ,if they're not there you wont catch them.I dont know how to stop the weed gathering on the ledger, I can only imagine it will get worse now the leaves are dropping as well.which river you fishing and where?

 

It's the Burton Mutual stretch of the river dove below Tutbury, the main problem with it is keeping an eye on the quiver tip and not looking at the view and wildlife :-(. A bait dropper sounds like possibly a good idea although it would provide the grouped bait around the hook bait that PVA would but it would get more bait into the area. Do tackle shops stock bait droppers? I've never seen them but I haven't really looked either.

[starlight]

you can still get bait droppers, plastic or metal, i would go for metal as i used to find that the plastic ones break quite easly, especially if it is very weedy. the only way i ever found of beating the dreaded floating weed was by coming in out of the main flow under the rod tip, the only other option is to use an even heavier lead that will hold on out there for longer. or maybe touch ledger with the rod tip under the surface.