Winning tactics from Des Shipp
You will, with Des Shipp’s advice...
BARBEL are here to stay on our commercial fisheries, and becoming a match-winning species.
On any water stocked with barbel, chances are there will be a few pegs noted for them, known as ‘barbel holes’. Draw one of these pegs and you’d be a fool not to factor a few ‘Berties’ into your plan.
The best place in a swim to target them, even now, is in the margins. Good depth and plenty of cover above and below the water suits them, and they happily co-exist alongside carp, F1s and bream.
Barbel are also a shoal fish, so where you find one, others won’t be far behind. They’re also likely to feed in the edge far earlier than carp will.
Barbel have developed a taste for pellets, corn and even paste, but I still believe that small particles are best. Maggots, casters and hemp are hard to beat to get them grubbing about and I’d take them all if I was going to be fishing a barbel peg.
After catching plenty of carp on the waggler from the Horseshoe Lake at Alvechurch Fisheries, it was time to have a go for a few barbel. I’d been told that the margins of my peg were noted for them, so here’s how I would go about catching a netful...
PICKING YOUR LINE
Barbel will feed a little closer to you than carp do in the edge, so I wouldn’t be using 11m of pole down the side. Around 4m is a good distance as it allows me to feed by hand and make a bit of noise by raining the bait in. If you need to fish past this point, I’d change over to feeding with a big pot for better accuracy. How close you fish to the bank depends on the depth, but to my mind, 2ft-2ft 6ins is bang on. Barbel are very active, and when they’re feeding, they will constantly knock the rig – you need to find the depth to keep this to a minimum. A flat bottom is perfect, and I’d try and find the spot where the slope ends and the flat bottom begins. The only other thing to be aware of is if your peg has an undercut bank. Barbel hide underneath, venturing out to feed. Hook one and it’ll bolt straight for this undercut, so before you start
fishing, roll your sleeve up and feel under the bank to see if it’s undercut. If so, bear this in mind for when you may need to fish tight up to the bank as the fish show signs of backing off.
SENSIBLE RIGS
Don’t believe that stillwater barbel fight any less hard than their river cousins. Hook one and it will race off at speed. Even when it comes to netting, they always try to swim under your keepnet or around platform legs when you least expect it.
Wear and tear on your rig will be frightening, so you need to fish robustly. I use 0.17mm Powerline as a mainline to a 6ins hooklink of 0.15mm Powerline and a size 14 PR456, a strong carp hook for ‘hit-and-hold’ fishing.
Elastic is an important part of your set-up, as this will govern how much pressure you can apply when trying to stop a hooked barbel. Purple-grade Hollo, around a No12 to No14, is just about perfect, as barbel have
tough mouths. Hook pulls will be minimal, and there’s enough guts in the elastic for you to strip some out using a puller kit and really pile on the pressure.
My float is a 4x12 Inline Margin. An inline pattern is best as there’s no side eye to get ripped out, or the chance of line cutting into the body during the day. In the past, my rig tray has looked like a battle zone after a day’s barbel fishing. They really do punish your floats and lines!
FEEDING
As I said earlier, feeding can be done by hand at short range or by using a big pot for longer distances in the edge.
I’d take maggots and casters with me and feed casters as opposed to maggots, simply because I always feel that I can fish a wider range of hookbaits over these. Half a big pot would go in at the start to create a small bed of bait, and from then on I’d either keep throwing casters in by hand every 10 minutes or, if
I was having to pot bait in, this would be another half-pot every 40 minutes. Barbel are greedy, aggressive fish and you can afford to give them a bit of feed!
For the hook, I will use four dead red maggots. These create a good stand-out bait for the fish to pick out, but a change to a piece of corn, a cube of meat or even a whole worm can turn little knocks on the float into sail-away bites.
TIMING
Be aware that barbel can be in the edge from the word go, as they’re far bolder than carp or F1s. For this reason I would have a quick look for them 20 minutes or so into a match, just to see.
If nothing happens then I would leave well alone and return perhaps 90 minutes later, after I’ve been feeding the swim steadily.
If things are still slow, I’d have another look every half-an-hour after this but I’d be amazed if I didn’t catch a few after two hours, provided that the fish were in the mood, of course!
If things are a struggle, I will adopt a very positive feeding attack by dumping in almost a full pot of bait in one hit. This is done simply to encourage fish into having a go, as plainly trickling the bait is isn’t working.