just cut it up into cubes and hook through the corner

Through the 1960’s almost up to the present time there have been three main approaches to catching barbel in terms of bait. One is to preoccupy them by using large quantities of small food items, such as maggots, casters, hemp, corn or small pieces of meat. Another is the big bait approach, using for example, relatively big cubes of luncheon meat, meat paste, sausage or cheese with few free offerings. The third is perhaps a cross between the two, feeding the small food items, usually in the form of hemp, and fishing a bigger hookbait, often luncheon meat. Sweetcorn also came into the picture, and could be fished either way, as a relatively small bait, or as a bigger offering, by mounting several baits on the hook. Lobworms will still be taken readily by barbel, as will quite a few other baits, depending on the condition of the water, and conditioning of the fish. By that I mean the amount of angling pressure the barbel have been subject to. This really is the key to it. Barbel fishing has moved on apace with the introduction of special baits, mostly over the last 8 or 10 years. I’ll come to that in the next article, but in this piece I’d like to go through the more standard approach. Out of date? Maybe, but if the barbel you are after haven’t suffered too much angling pressure then they can still be caught by what some might consider old-fashioned methods. In fact, if your barbel have been force fed on boilies for years, you never know, they might welcome a nice lump of cheddar. There is no need to rush into using the latest wonder bait – the sooner you do, the sooner you will be looking for yet another edge, which might, for a while at least, be hard to find. However, I guess I would be naïve to think that many people reading this would stick with the older baits after reading next month’s article! But never the less…. Hemp is still a fantastic barbel attractor, and I’ve caught many barbel by using up to 6 pints in a night and fishing legered baits over the top. A tip here – rather than spend a long time putting in hemp with a bait dropper, mix it with a little bread crumb to form a stiffish ground-bait. This can be thrown into the swim prior to and during fishing and the swim is far more easily baited in this way than with a dropper. The crumb will also help attract the fish. Meat will still catch barbel, though you might have to think just a little about how you use it. Too many anglers see luncheon meat as the bait for barbel, and in truth it has possibly accounted for as many of these fish as anything else. But I suspect that this is partly because more people use it. The occasional barbel angler will often find the convenience of being able to buy his bait from the supermarket, or just taking a tin from the kitchen shelf, too hard to resist and often will look no further. But occasional barbel anglers generally catch occasional barbel. They will often fish in clear rivers, in open swims, in summer, with large pieces of meat. On many occasions I’ve seen barbel which had been feeding happily on maggots, casters and the occasional grain of corn, leave the swim completely as soon as a piece of meat, or even a large lobworm is introduced. If you can’t see the fish you won’t know this is happening, but I can assure you that in a clear river, it often does. The answer with these fish is to feed small baits, and fish small baits, on a small strong hook. I’ve caught barbel in this situation by going down to a size 16 Drennan Super Specialist and baiting with a single small bait. Obviously fishing these baits on thick line won’t help presentation, but you will be surprised what you can do with an Avon rod and a fine diameter monofilament of 6-8lbs breaking strain. Generally the time for the bigger baits is when the light fades, or when the river is carrying colour. I don’t want to deal with floodwater fishing here, but a summer storm can often colour the river enough to make the barbel lose their caution in the daytime. At night things are different altogether, and by laying down a good bed of hemp, you can catch barbel right through to daylight. If you use luncheon meat as a hookbait, scatter a few samples around the swim from time to time. And try several brands. On some rivers I fish, Spam has out-fished other brands, while on others Plumrose Bacon Grill has been excellent, its effectiveness spoilt only by its attractiveness to small pike. Some brands are harder than others, a consideration if you are fishing fast water where the bait might more easily be washed from the hook. It might be worth fishing luncheon meat in an alternative shape to the traditional cube. I used to carry short sections of narrow diameter pipe, and punch out round baits from a slab of meat. I don’t know how much difference this made to the fish, but it certainly worked. Other meat baits worth investigating are the various “foreign” sausages such as garlic sausage. Most meat baits lend themselves to dying, or various forms of flavouring, whether it be through soaking, or actually cooking in the chosen additive. Pepperami would seem to be the ideal barbel bait, smelly, tasty and tough. But I’ve only ever managed to catch barbel on it from the Middlesex Colne, though have tried it on other rivers. Cheese is an excellent and perhaps under-rated summer bait for barbel. Don’t worry about making up a soft paste so the hook will pull through it – just cut it up into cubes and hook through the corner – it works just as well. Change the baits about during the night, give the barbel a choice, easier if you fish 2 rods, or are fishing with a friend. Barbel will often change their preferences several times during just a few hours. If there is no-one else about you could bait several swims and fish them in turn, though the crowded nature of some of our rivers may preclude this. And you might understandably feel you are in the best swim, and if you leave it, someone else might jump in there. A tricky one this. You could always leave a chair there and wander off with the rest of your gear, but this can and will lead (rightly so) to some disputes about how many swims you are actually allowed to fish at one time. Or you might get your chair pinched. So, moving about may not be a practical proposition unless you are fishing with a friend and can take it in turns to go off walking. For anyone who has never fished through the night for barbel, but who normally packs up at dusk, fishing at night could be a revelation, especially if the river has not been night-fished too much previously. Once the barbel get hammered at night things tend to even up slightly, though probably even then, most barbel will still come out at night. It is a lot easier than daytime fishing. You can catch them during the day alright, but on most rivers, in average summer conditions, you will have to work far harder for your fish. You must be careful in the dark. Especially if you are not familiar with the river. Try to spend some time there in daylight, get to know the swims, and the safe places to return barbel, safe for you as well as the fish. Mark these places with a small piece of white rag or polythene tied to a stick – you’ll be surprised how different things seem on a really black night. If you catch one and wish to photograph it, don’t fire flashguns at the fish without first accustoming it to light by shining a small torch on it. Use strong tackle – you don’t want to exhaust summer barbel with long fights, especially as you might find nursing them back in the dark more difficult than in the daytime. There is absolutely no need to fish fine at night – I generally use 14lb Fireline (breaks at nearly 30lb) and a 20lb braid hooklink, both lines having the diameter of 6lb mono. Don’t just put the fish back and think all is well – hold them in the current until they remain upright and swim off by themselves. If possible, shine a torch into the water and watch them for a while to ensure they don’t belly up. Get yourself a head-torch – they are indispensable. I used to be paranoid about shining a torch onto the water, but in deep water at least, (unless of course you are purposely shining the torch onto a released barbel) much of the light will be reflected and be un-noticed by the fish. There’s still no point in indiscriminately shining a torch on the river – if you don’t upset the fish you will certainly upset other anglers and you might finish on the wrong end of a bankstick! Try to get some white scales (Weighmaster make them), or wrap some white adhesive tape around them. Do the same with your bank-sticks, just a few turns will help. Again, a couple of turns of white tape at either end of your landing net handle will go some way to preventing you from standing on it and crushing it. To fish efficiently at night you need to be organised. After landing, weighing and photographing a good fish your swim will look like a battlefield. The better organised you are the easier it will be to find everything when you next need it. And lastly, take warm clothes – summer nights can get very cold indeed. Using the baits listed above I’m not sure if the hair rig will give you any advantage. Certainly I never used it with the standard barbel baits, and don’t believe that handicapped me in any way. At night especially it is far easier to just put the hook into the bait than to be fiddling about with hairs.

That’s about it, a short summary of the use of the more standard barbel baits. I’m assuming you know where to put them. But as well as angling pressure increasing on many of our rivers, a not so popular crustacean has also increased. From small beginnings of a relatively low number of these alien looking creatures being bred in stillwaters for the table, the North American Red Signal crayfish has bred to epidemic proportions in many areas, making the hook-life of a normal softish barbel bait very short indeed. Whilst these immigrants have undoubtedly contributed to the growth rates of the chub and barbel, they can at times be an awful nuisance and make it impossible to fish with soft baits. Other baits had to be tried, and the carp angler’s boilie, designed as it was to resist the attentions of small fish, was the obvious next step. Next month I’ll talk about the boilie revolution on the rivers, bait making and most important, bait application.