River flow

[Steve Spiller]

Mr Raffles, an open end feeder packed tightly mgiht be the way to go?

PVA bags work out a bit expensive, especially if you're fishing a long session.

[Mark Hewitt]

Tight arse.

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[Grumpy Git @]

I heard he loves a tight arse [img]/forum/smilies/confused_smiley.gif[/img]

I wouldn't get hung up about baiting too tightly, plus boilies will fall through the water very quickly......

With barbel I think you are better off getting them foraging around with your hook bait in the general area, rather than just having a very tight small area. Its not like they are carp with their heads down and arses up!

Having spent some time measuring river flows when I was studying (always seemed in winter!). As mentioned the flows at the bed can be very, very slow, even in fast flowing water.

[The bad one]

Couldn't disagree with anything said above..... bang on!

However, when baiting with freebies or groundbait balls you need to gauge where they are likely to settle, based on the speed of the flow you can see on the surface, depth of water down to the bed.

Difficult one this one, but as a roughrule of thumb on the Ribble, which is as fast as any river anywhere in the country, and at Normal Summer Level (NSL) I'd go for baiting 2 yards up of where the hook bait is for every 3 ft depth of water for groundbait balls and 3-4 yards up for pellet. For every ft of water above NSL I'd increase those distances by a the same 2, 3-4yardsdistances for the bait being put in.

It's also worth saying never be afraid of working the swim with your hook bait up or down.

[slime monster]

Watching underwater videos of barbel i was surprised how far up in the water they were swimming ,this went against my minds eye of them being nailed to the deck for most of the time, then it occured to me that in high flood water conditions they will seek the slower water on the bottom making sense of why these conditions are popular with barbel anglers .

[Alan Tyler]

You may be onto something there! Did the "give 'em a gallon" barbel trotters of the Royalty's glory days have their best results in low flows or high? Anyone know/remember?