Graham Whatmore
Senior Member
I am currently reading Bob Church's book "Big Barbel" and when flicking through it I came across the river records for barbel as of December 2004.
I was absolutely stunned to read just how many of our rivers contain barbel let alone specimen sized barbel. If I had been asked the question I would have said somewhere around 20 maybe slightly more. What would you have guessed, that is if you didn't already know?
Well the answer is 61 and that's only the rivers that have official barbel records. I don't know about you but I find that an amazing fact, I would never have dreamt in a month of Sundays that there were that many, like I always say you are never too old to learn!
I was even more amazed to see that the tiny river Mease in Staffs has a barbel record of 13lb. That this tiny little river that you can literally jump across in places should contain barbel of that size makes me wonder if we are neglecting some of our smaller waterways. I have known for 40 years that the Mease contains some specimen sized roach and chub but I never thought for a minute it contained barbel.
I was absolutely stunned to read just how many of our rivers contain barbel let alone specimen sized barbel. If I had been asked the question I would have said somewhere around 20 maybe slightly more. What would you have guessed, that is if you didn't already know?
Well the answer is 61 and that's only the rivers that have official barbel records. I don't know about you but I find that an amazing fact, I would never have dreamt in a month of Sundays that there were that many, like I always say you are never too old to learn!
I was even more amazed to see that the tiny river Mease in Staffs has a barbel record of 13lb. That this tiny little river that you can literally jump across in places should contain barbel of that size makes me wonder if we are neglecting some of our smaller waterways. I have known for 40 years that the Mease contains some specimen sized roach and chub but I never thought for a minute it contained barbel.