bangs that dont hook themselves

I am getting the bait/pellett hit but they dont hook themselves, am hair rigging either two elips pelletts back to back, or fourteen ml halibut pellett, to a size 12 Super Specialist, this is tied to 9lb fluorocarbon. The length of the hooklength seems to makes no difference. Is the hair too long?Is the hook too small? Is it Chub? I dont have enough time to experiment, anyone have an idea? Thanks Mick

Where are you fishing mate , river, lake, canal, helps if we know?

Probably chub or skimmers, but I think your hooks a bit on the small size too, try a
size 8 with the 14mm pellet.

Jon

I don't have time to experiment?

But those of us that have experimented should use their time to reply to you?

Hmmm? Sorry, don't have enough time.

Hi Mick, welcome to FM.
Some of us may have enough time, let us have more detail of what/where you are fishing.

Mick, like a few others have suggested, a bit more info would be helpful (hair length etc)

But from the info you've given I can see a few potential causes: if using Drennan Super Specialist Barbel hooks with Fluoro line it turns the hook point to far leading to it masking itself.
Not such a problem with the standard Super Specialist pattern but still better off using a hook with a slightly out turned eye.
Or try a more supple hook length material; mono (for Ron C nylon) or braid.

I'm going to be bold now and assume you're fishing a river, what with chub and barbel being present.
If my assumption is correct, it could well be chub or bream though even a 12oz skimmer can easily snaffle a 14mm bait.

Personally I'd try a single Elips pellet on a short hair, so the bait is no more than 4-5mm off of the bend of your hook, if its chub or small bream you'll start catching them and so you can act from there.

It seems obvious to me that the fish are taking the bait and not the hook

try putting the bait on the hook with a pellet band

I'm with CQ on most of what he said on this one. If the the fluoro is tied with a knotless knot this will produce too much angle. If you insist on using this hook with fluoro then whip a seperate braided hair on.

Sorry forgot to mention i am fishing on the R Swale; maybe i didnt quite phrase it right saying i hadnt time to experiment, could have said i fish from 2 or 3pm until about 7.30 usually on a Saturday, so fishing time is precious,and have only taken up Barbel fishing at the ,back end of last year, and just thought somebody would be able to put their finger on it straight away, any way thanks to the people who took time to answer has given me food for thought

Did Dave Burr leave his bed the wrong side this morning.......why post if you don't want to say anything positive??

Anyway,IMO the hook is just too small(size 8 could do better) and Slime Monster's bands might just do the trick...

Are you getting really big pulls,maybe with the bait runner going? Or are they just good pull rounds? The latter are probably chub and in all probability the former are liners.

Things to try are:

A single 8mm pellet on the hair

Banding the pellet on to the hair

Pinning the line down above the lead/feeder - power gum stop knot wrapped with tungsten putty, rod top LOW

I'd be happy to meet up and have a look at what you're doing - I'm fishing the Swale with Matt White on the 25th Sept so PM me if you want to meet up.

I'm down in Cornwall from tomorrow so I won't be able to reply until next week (no mobile signal, let alone 3G)

Occassionally on the Severn, and especially when water is low and clear, you get days when you get little nips and dinks on the tip... which you would normally ascribe to chub grabbing the bait and not the hook...

The last time this happened I was fishing with a small hooks (14s Drennan barbel), 3ft plus 7.9lb hooklink and 6mm pellet and I was on the bank with Neil Maidment.

We both experienced the same thing for a couple of hours and after discussing the issue we decided to change to touch-legering rather than waiting for the traditional wrap-around.

The result within 10 mins was a tiny pluck on the line converted into an 11lb 4oz barbel on the bank for Neil...

http://www.fishingmagic.com/forums/members/****y-angling-trust-pac--albums-fishing-friends-picture545-neils-severn-double-11lb-4oz.jpg

Sometimes barbel are not the 'suckers' we presume them to be...

---------- Post added at 21:32 ---------- Previous post was at 21:26 ----------

Sean Meeghan said:

Are you getting really big pulls,maybe with the bait runner going?

Click to expand...

It's only a personal thing but, in most circumstances, I don't think baitrunners are best for barbel bites... too much margin of error. Give them an inch and they'll find a snag.

Earlier this season I fished a clear shallow swim which is well known for its Barbel and Chub; Above me was an angler trotting small cubes of luncheonmeat and at the end of each trot the angler would lose his bait as he started to reel back in.
This was happening about 4ft in front of me in crystal clear water.

Nearly every time this happened a Chub would chase the meat as it settled in the gravel, grab it in between its lips and dart away towards the far side of the stream, and away from the rest of the shoal; just like a bird flies away from the other birds with a piece of bread in its beak before it can eat it in relative peace.

So a lot of bites where the rod tip wraps right round without hooking a fish are just Chub grabbing the bait and darting off with the bait still between their lips and with the hook hanging free outside of the mouth.

Try fishing with the hook directly in the meat with the point standing proud or fishing with a short hair with the bait touching the back of the hook.

Good advice. Told yer!!
I would go along with chub snatches being the problem.
I'm happy to catch chub,so I fish with a short hair with the pellet(s)off the back of the hook.

The point I was making was that too many anglers nowadays want a quick fix and don't want to do the leg work. The Net panders to this attitude and it doesn't encourage people to learn themselves and to become better anglers as a result.

Having got that off my chest, here's my five penneth worth.

A lot of the short pulls you get are from small fish but some are undoubtably from big ones. The chub, in some of the swims where I fish, have become very cute and will give little taps and pulls where two years ago it was screamers every time. To overcome this I have fished with a light running set-up that gives them some line. When I get a slight pull I give them an extra foot of line and keep this up until the take is hittable.

Alternatively, where possible, I have found that fishing from an upstream position can fool them. As the pick up the bait it dislodges the delicately balanced lead and fools them into thinking that all is well, the result is a decent bite.

If barbel are the culprits I have found that they either hit the bait at 100mph and drop it immediately or, and usually the case on the Wye, they pick it up very carefully and pull just enough to feel the resistance of the lead. When touch legering this feels like a slight but very definite pull of about 1/2 to 1" and if hit always results in a fish.

Of course none of this helps if your rig is no good. Braid will work better than fluorocarbon as it is more supple. I often use a combi-rig to achieve the best result. A 12 hook is too small for two 14mm pellets in my opinion and an 8 would be better or, and my choice, use the 12 but with a single 8mm or two 6mm pellets.

But t does take experimentation on your behalf and, although your fishing time is precious, that's what fishing is all about.

I just knew you had to be a decent sort of chap...what with coming from Herefordshire as well....and thats a very good response which I,for one found interesting!

Just spent 4 days in your neck of the woods(not fishing)at a little place called Titley.Not too much you can say about Titley cos you'd miss it if you blinked BUT it does have the most beautiful Titley Pools(3 decent size lakes)which although being nature reserves are the nearest thing to perfection I've seen for many years......

I came across them in a storm,late in the evening and they looked just like the perfect carp water-almost as beautiful as Redmire when I first saw it....

Now if I win the Lottery this week I might just.......

Not if I win the lottery first

Dave's points are valid to an extent,but Mick's explanation is also,so a slight misunderstanding,im sure Mick would understand that some anglers on site put a lot of time and effort into fine tuning their fishing,others just want to 'use' these anglers efforts,for me i share my knowledge,for what its worth and i would have been buying a few patterns of hook in a few sizes,to see which suits Micks approach,in fact i normally carry about 4 patterns,mainly in 10's or 8's as this tends to suit my bait sizes on the hair rig,probably a combi-rig for me also(if i use maggot or caster i hook em on,so carry more sizes,my personal choice).

mick are you using a feeder? if you are it might be that the barbel are picking your feeder up and shaking it, i have seen this happen years ago on the royalty when large amounts of maggots were being used,the way we got round this was to use a lead instead of a feeder and bait dropper the maggots into the swim.

If you want to maximise your fishing time you will have to experiment mate, it's the only way to become efficient in what your doing, but one thing I would say is that you have your whole fishing life ahead of you, so don't play the numbers game just try and get some pleasure out of your limited time on the bank and success will come. If I were you I would stick to the simple for now, before you start buying new line and hooks, just try touch ledgering as has already been mentioned, at least then you give yourself a much better chance of finding out what the culprit is, if you still can't hit the bites then try placing your hook bait away from your loose feed, assuming you are loose feeding that is. The next peg upstream or downstream depending on distance is alway worth a crack to catch wary fish off guard and get a positive bite, 20-40 yards is a general rule of thumb, or if you have to stay in the same swim, put your hookbait on the far bank if your feed is near bank or upstream, whatever just keep it off that loose feed. Then if none of that works bigger hooks etc a step at a time.

Rich