Barbel Growth Rates

[skov]

Does anyone know how big barbel typically get on a year by year basis?

In particular, if the EA stocked some in a river in 2013, how big are they likely to be now? (Assuming any have actually survived...)

 

[tigger]

If there's a decent food supply they've gott'a be 3lb'sh maybe a little more. As far as i'm aware they arn't fast growing fish so I can't see them being much bigger than that. Although saying that the food supply has got to make a massive difference to their growth rate though.

 

[The bad one]

A rough rule of thumb about half a pound a year

 

[Keith M]

Here's a barbel growth rate chart for the river Lea which was produced a few years ago.

It plots the growth rates found in barbel up to 12 years of age on the river Lea, and the wavy bit was said to be because the number of barbel that were sampled at the top end of the chart was a lot fewer.

Keith

 

[theartist]

Surely Keith the line wouldn't waver with less data as the average would still be constant otherwise the graph would be worthless. As it's done on length rather than weight it shows that the length of the Barbel slows right down which would hold true of slow southern rivers, as they tend till fill out and a 18lb fish would be not much longer than a 10lb fish

 

[Keith M]

Rob, For each year range the lengths would vary slightly from fish to fish so the more fish that were sampled of a particular age then the smoother the line tended to be; and the larger fish were where the averages tended to waiver slightly simply because fewer samples were able to be caught of a particular age group; but it still gives a good indication of their overall average lengths.

I suppose that if they wanted to they could have just smoothed out the line curve and still got a fairly good indication of the average lengths for a particular year group but the graph simply displays the data as it was.

That was the reason given for the slight wavy parts of the graph anyway.

Keith

 

[jasonbean1]

from my experience with the barbel stocking on the Cherwell that were done over 3 yeas, this was 6,7,8 years ago there are massive differences in growth rates...surprisingly very slow at the start.

I reckon a 2013 stocked fish would be around 2-3lb for a male and 3-5llb for a female.

The Cherwell had hardly any original barbel left so when they started showing which was almost immediately after stocking they were 5oz fish, for the 2nd year a little bit bigger...they then disappear for a few years and then turned up around a 1.5lb -3lb.

some now after 7 years have reached between 5 and 8lb which I would presume are females.

 

[skov]

Thanks for the replies all :thumbs: