How big

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

With all this talk about big barbel, I have often wondered how big the common barbel can get. We must of course discount the various other varieties of Barbus such as the Mahseer or some of the African species and concentrate on our own European fish.

As far as I have been able to discover, the biggest barbel are found in the rivers of the Ukraine where they can reach 15 kg (33lbs). But local people have no interest in them as they claim the flesh and the roe is poisonous.

The Vistula River in Poland also has a reputation for big barbel. But here again, the locals hardly fish for them.

What else do we know about the barbel of Europe?

 

[Tony Rocca]

Lots of different sorts isnt there Ron.

Those Andalucians and Cozimos in Spain are supposed to go 30lb.

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

Barbus barbus barbus (that's our barbel) is widespread over a lot of Europe.

I have caught about 8 different types of African Barbus in my life. All of them fascinating, hard fighting and impressive.

Why is it by the way that many anglers shy away from using the scientific names for our fish?

 

[Fred Bonney]

One Barbus too many, Ron?
Probably because they can't get the scientific names right ;o)

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

That is what the latest scientific name states Fred.

 

[Fred Bonney]

Not in any of my references, it don't!

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

Try www.webcityof.com/miff1013.htm

Seriously I find great difficulty in locating top quality ichthyologists these days. It seems that the Universities do not have them.

In SA for example on species of Barbus has had its scientific name changed 3 times over the past 20 years. But to get the facts on why, is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

In the 60s, I was a member of the British Ichthyological Society. I had a few friends who were tops at species identification, habitat and many other things appertaining to fish.

I guess they are all dead today.

 

[Bryan Baron 2]

Who knows Ron. 20 years ago you would have been laugthed at if you said you would be catching double figure fish out of most of the rivers ins the country.

Water quality, food source's, climate change and loss of other species all have a influence on the growth rates of all fish. In some ways this is good and yet we are loosing in others. Only time will tell were it will stop as nature always as a way of leveling things out and keeping a balance as long as we let her that is.

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA-Life Member)]

It's the warmer winters that are the reason for the bigger barbel if you ask me. Coupled with the fact that cormorants wreak havoc amongst the smaller species such as roach and dace.

Rivers, and any other freshwater in fact can only support a certain biomass. Cut out the smaller species due to cormorant predation and fish like barbel, have more to eat.

 

[Dicky (Angling Trust PAC)]

Sorry to go briefly off thread Ron, but the comorants in Worcester roost near to the best roach swims and I caught a near-twenty pike in the vincinity, with a massive stab wound to its head...could that have been a comorant too?

Back to the main point,

the warmer winters must have had an effect on growth rate. Might the increase in flooding have helped as well? When the river is dropping and all that food is settling, the barbel seem to go into gorge (rather than just feed) mode.

I have had some of my best catches on the Severn when the river has only just returned within the upper limit of its banks from the floodplain.

 

[Tony Rocca]

Thats a very interesting point ****y, more floods resulting in more gorging spells, resulting in fatter fish on average.

Everyone just talks about warmer water temps resulting in more feeding, not the availability of natural food due to more floods.

It might be possible to corralate the relationship if you had the data.

 

[Phil Hackett disability bad speller with Pride]

Tony I'm unclear as to which food supply you mean in your statement?
Do you mean the natural invertebrates supply contained in the water?
Or what I?ll call the ?Natural Supplementary Supply?(NSS for short), which would come with more and higher flooding conditions?
This would include vegetation seed natural and crop, terrestrial over-wintering beetles, grubs, other terrestrial insects normally found above the natural high water mark, worms, slugs, terrestrial snails and the like. All of which wouldn?t be present in great quantities under normal conditions, but can and do get washed in with elevated flood levels.

My thoughts on why they?re getting bigger is, it?s a combination of all the factors so far mentioned, with others that haven?t.

 

[Sean Meeghan]

I blame the hormones going into the water. Could be why we get a lot of old women on this site too ......

 

[captain carrott]

as far as names go i tend to follow baensch and he reckons you got one too many barbus in there as well ron.

 

[Fred Bonney]

I've given up arguing! ;o)

 

[coelacanth]

The Baensch altases are, as with all printed literature, out of date almost as soon as they are printed (plus, being English language editions of German originals they are frequently even more so).
Many taxonomists now drop the trinomial naming system to indicate subspecies, and just use the classic binomial method.

Some good start points for keeping up with new information below. Fishbase is a good tool to use, frequently out of date but at least it's easy to use and it's a single reference point.

http://filaman.ifm-geomar.de/search.php

http://www.pfeil-verlag.de/ef1.html

http://www.asih.org/pubs/oldpubs.html

http://www.fsbi.org.uk/

 

[Grant Lever]

barbus barbus.....so good they named it twice.............