Any ideas on how to target/single out still water barbel?

I will shortly be attempting to catch a still water barbel from a local commercail that banns boilies ,nuts and barbed hooks .
I have yet to catch any barbel though I am pretty sure I have had two on in the past.
I am thinking along the lines of hair riged halibet pellet maybe wrapped in paste or an oilie floater used as a critically balencened bait in a pva stocking to try and make it get sucked in easy.

As I have not fished the lake before I am not sure how the fish behave and what quantities of barbel are in there though I have met two people who have caught them there.

I can't think of anything that will pick out the barbel over the carp ,there are also chub in there up to 7lb but I would not mind that.

I do know the barbel are up to 10lb .

Oh-ohhhh! Call the barbel Police!!!

Are the barbel getting along fine, sounds like it if they've reached 10lbs.

Could try tipping the pellet with an artificial foating sweetcorn.

i think that you will have to fish through the other species and hope that a barbel comes along as i cant think of any method/bait that will target barbel only when carp and chub are present in the same water

No hard and fast rules I'm afraid Dayglo. I have caught quite a few barbel from still waters but have not specificaly targetted them. I caught several back in October on the pole by fising thenear side margin just using single maggot without any loose feed offerings at all. I was fishing the far side catching plenty of orf, carp and rudd. Not one barbel showed in that swim. But the near side, no probs. My mate tried his near side margin but he had baited with some loose maggots and he caught nowt. I have used this same ploy before with some success but only put in every hour or so and extracted a barbel. If no bite after several minutes I went back to the far side and left alone for another hour or so. I have done this several times on the one venue, on others I have been general fishing and they ahve just come along. Chuck it and chance it. Best barbel has been 4 1/4 lb.

Good luck.

Dayglo,i have caught many stillwater barbel and as has been mentioned you will have have to wade through the other species,one thing i did find is that once the water had warmed enough,if i fished very close in and baited fairly heavily with hemp,they usually came in and had it out with the carp,also if small fish arent too much of a nuisance maggot is simply the best for berties,if they are then sweetcorn fed and fished over the bed of hemp was a pretty good alternative,i have had quite a lot of fish on several venues to just under 9lbs,not in the last few years mind.S*d the barbel police Woody.

How refreshing, someone asks about stillwater barbel and lives to tell the tale

My advice for you is simple, give 'em a bait that only the big 'uns can swallow and there's none better than luncheon meat/bacon grill.

I would bait the margins (near reads preferably) with hemp and fish a large lump of met on top.If there are lots of smaller fish that will whittle the meat down then I suggest you cut it into bait sized chunks then fry it before hand. This toughens the bait and makes it less likely to be knobbled by a tiddler.

Once you have caught from a stillwater I am certain that you will 'progress' to running waters where they are even more rewarding to catch and will fight even harder.

Dayglo i think you threw the right feed in mate.Its amazing to me Dave,i believe the natural place for barbel is rivers,but what right would any angler have to tell a lake owner whether or not he can stock barbel or not,its absurd to the extreme and highly naive to boot,after all these fish are not being sentanced to death,the only shortfall is if they are stocked into waters with a large stock density of carp,but that could be said for most normal stillwater species,i think if i had a decent lake and the cash to stock it,i would put barbel in it and get it in the papers,only thing is we might get the equivelent of the animal rights version of the barbel police releasing them,lol.

Most of the barbel in most of the stillwaters have probably never seen or been in running water in their lives .....so I can't see what the problem is

ED (The ORIGINAL and REAL one) said:

Most of the barbel in most of the stillwaters have probably never seen or been in running water in their lives .....so I can't see what the problem is

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Absolutely correct.

They're bred at Calverton from Trent stock in still water and transferred from there into bigger stillwaters, if they're sold to a commercial fishery that is. No harm at all will come to them and they should continue to grow to the usual sizes for barbel.

PS the only reason I mentioned barbel police is because this is a topic that usually raises the hackles of some barbel anglers. I have no problems at all with stocking barbel into stillwaters so long as the EA says it's a healthy environment and they have a section 30. It's the fishery owners money and he can spend it how he likes.

Nowt like catching them in a river though, but that applies to most species, even roach.

PPS try a huge 26mm halibut pellet, tehy'll get their big gobs around that alright, but crucians and roach won't.

Jeff Woody said:

Absolutely correct.

They're bred at Calverton from Trent stock in still water and transferred from there into bigger stillwaters, if they're sold to a commercial fishery that is. No harm at all will come to them and they should continue to grow to the usual sizes for barbel.

PS the only reason I mentioned barbel police is because this is a topic that usually raises the hackles of some barbel anglers. I have no problems at all with stocking barbel into stillwaters so long as the EA says it's a healthy environment and they have a section 30. It's the fishery owners money and he can spend it how he likes.

Nowt like catching them in a river though, but that applies to most species, even roach.

PPS try a huge 26mm halibut pellet, tehy'll get their big gobs around that alright, but crucians and roach won't.

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Whether I agree with 'stillwater barbel' or not (which I don't), it is incredibly refreshing to see reasoned response and debate restored, rather than the carnage and sniping of the bad ole days.

Dayglow,

If you really can't find a river to fish for them (you could always come to a fish-in; I'll probably be organising one on the Severn later in the year)...

As Jeff says donkey-choker pellets are probably the way to go to single them out (although you will catch a lot of nuisance c**p).

Not entirely sure I've got this bit right but I seem to remember that Keith Arthur's mate Roy Marlowe (is it?) at the Glebe (?) is a bit of an expert on stillwater barbelling (cough... deep breath)...

He can be contacted via email on this SITE

Hope that helps mate,

Good luck

Time has moved on. In the early days of barbel appearing in stillwaters many of them had been stolen from rivers which is something I abhor. Now that stillwater bred barbel are available to the commercials we should embrace those that target them and hopefully, gently steer them towards a river.

alan whittington said:

i believe the natural place for barbel is rivers,but what right would any angler have to tell a lake owner whether or not he can stock barbel or not

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Like you Alan I also believe that Barbel belong only in rivers, and of course, no angler can tell a fishery owner what he can or cannot stock in his water.

That said, what we can do though is vote with our feet and wallets and choose not spend our money on day tickets to fish his venue.

There is so much venue choice available these days that I for one do not need to fish a stillwater where there are stocked Barbel, regardless of whatever source they may have originated from.

Not a member of the Barbel Police, whoever they might be, but simply my personal thoughts on stillwater stocking of Barbel.

---------- Post added at 13:32 ---------- Previous post was at 13:30 ----------

Dave Burr said:

Now that stillwater bred barbel are available to the commercials . . . . .

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Dave,

Are these fish really bred in 'stillwater' or artifically created 'river' tanks with an artificial flow induced?

I must have been light years ahead of my time when I proposed the Stillwater Barbel Society!

;-)

The methodology for how barbel are stripped, eggs fertilsed and then grown on is covered in-depth in the BD&W Volume 1 (DVD). Alan Henshaw the EA Fisheries Scientist explains it all in detail.

The option to not stocking them in stillwaters is to kill them. Now that would be purism gone mad.

I've caught quite a few stillwater barbel (by accident) and report on many matches where they are caught. The solution isn't bait size in my opinion, it's location. These barbel tend to shoal and to frequent certain areas. I get reports of big bags of barbel from what are predominantly carp venues.

I fished the annual ACA Celebrity Masters a few years ago at Hayfield and couldn't catch a carp for the want of trying. All I caught were barbel.

Good to see open debate on the subject though.

I too have caught lots of stillwater barbel and they put up nearly as good a scrap as they do in the river the only difference being they are much smaller in size, 1 to 3lb usually. One thing I can say without any doubt they are fit as fiddles and fine looking fish, absolutely no difference between them and the river barbel.

I was lucky enough (or perhaps I should say old enough) to fish the Severn throughout the 60's when barbel first became prominent and the average fish was about the same size as commercial lake barbel are now. They pulled our string a bit in those days but of course they had the benefit of a current to aid them but in all honesty I can't say they looked any different.

What is certain is that in years to come they will become as accepted in still waters as any other fish, they will be the norm.

Peter

They are in pools that can only be described as 'still' water. They may well aerate the water with running water but it is basically a pond.

Barbel do very well in stillwater. I'm afraid that this is a fact in the same way that carp, chub, roach etc do very well in this environment. They just don't have sufficient oxygen in the gravel to breed successfully.

I don't want to bring the old argument to the fore again so that's enough on the subject.

Barbel often finnish up in still waters of their own accord when rivers are in flood and they get trapped there when the river levels subside again. I don't know if it will apply to barbel but it seems that another river fish "the chub" grows to a larger size in still waters than in rivers. I know from personal experience that chub do breed in still waters if there is a slight inlet and outlet of water so perhaps barbel will manage to reproduce in still waters also. Actually I do know of a pond of around an acre in size with no inlets or outlets that has a prolific head of chub which breed succesfully and their fry grow on very well, infact there was a very large chub caught not to long ago.
To me it's a good thing that barbel are being stocked in still waters as it may help to keep the rivers a little less pressured from bored carp anglers looking for a change of species.

Tigger,that last paragraph is very true,its a pity some never heard about stillwater barbel earlier,lol.

Well todays the day will be spending this afternoon attempting to get some barbel action thanks for the replys to this thread .
Main points I have picked up so far are :

Try an undisturbed nearside margin ,this has worked for chub on worm in the past.

Maggots are best if not full of small fish.

Try artificail floating sweetcorn on a pellet.

It is looking like a warm day so hemp and sweetcorn in a nearside margin is worth a try.

Try large baits like big bit of lunchion meat.

Try donkey choker pellets ,will only do this if I can buy them in small quantities as can't see them beeing usefull enough the rest of the time but I will be trying 10mm dynamite ones anyway.

Location is important so I will be moving every two hours rather than baiting and waiting.

I have spent a fair few evenings last year on the derbyshire derwent fishing into dark targeting the barbel and had two snapped 8lb hook lengths through a bite from something very powerfull but never actually landed anything ,I now live on the cambridshire/bedfordshire boarder so when the season starts I have loads of places round here to try ivel /ouse etc.

I now have experiance of landing largish fish ie carp to 19lb and have got my rigs and baits allot more honed through targeting my local free carp lake all winter so have much more confidence in what I will be doing to target barbel .

Dayglow, I am glad you are obvioulsy a chap who prefers to ask questions and do some research.

A man who is prepared to say, 'I don't know' and ask another for help ends up much more knowlegable in the long run.

I would like to ask you a question and I mean it with no ulterior motive other than to try and help if possible.

From reading some of your posts recently it seems to me, and I may be wrong, that you lose quite a lot of hooked fish, either through hooks bouncing out, pulling stright or broken hooklengths.

I wonder if we can offer any advice to help with that problem?

Yes help would be good I have had more than my fair share of problems with loosing fish though I will describe how I have interpreted them latley .

I have had a big problem using berkley vanish as a hook length that I stoped by not using it any more, personally I think it should be banned it's that bad.

Last summer when I started fishing again after a 16 year break I was striking at all bites very positivley and had a few hook pulls and tears in the unfortunate carps mouths.

It was because of this that I joined this forum to find out what I was doing wrong and found striking on self hooking rigs and striking far too hard were problems.

I then started my barbel campaigne using atfirst 8lb line and 6lb hook lengths but they were not enough and snapped at the first touch of a snag so I whent up to 8lb hook lengths in the days when I suspect my hook tieing abilities were not what they are now I also reused the hook lengths to often and did't sharpen the hooks.

I found on two occasions I had kamason 911 hooks straighten out on me when I was sure I had set the clutch just right on my reels .

I feel I have sorted that out by having a much more flexible aproach to the clutch and tightening or looseneing it up as and when it feels right depending on the fish .

As well as moving on to stronger hooks like QM1's.

I caught 4 carp at a venue useing my 2.5lb carp rod but must have lost 3 more on that session all hook pulls and have found the obvious answer has been to use more flexible rods though I did catch a 19lb carp from this venue and thought I was gearing up for more of the same.

I now know the test curve is all about casting weight not fish size.

My standard aproach to carp and barbel has been to try and get away with the smallest hook I can to improve presentation so I tend to use size 12 and 14 more than any other (this is an area I suspect might need improving though the 19lb was on a 14)

I have been told fairly recently that my hook sizes could be part of the problem?

I have found that I should not reuse 8lb daiwa sensor hook lengths more than a few times as they tend to snap but I do use lots of pva mesh bags so this could be putting strain on them.

Prehaps I shoule be attaching the bags to the lead somehow to stop this strain ?

I have just this week swapped to 9lb incognito but so far have no idea on it's service life maybe the safe side would be to not reuse after two sessions.

I have started to religiously sharpen every hook before it gets caste out.

As an example last night( my barbel session is now this afternoon as I ended up with to many things to do to make it worth paying to go to the comercial yesterday)I whent to my local for 2 hours had one under 2lb carp on my flayden telescopic boat rod .
Then lost another about twice the size after a small fight with the clutch set loose enough to let it run (so I thought) no idea how it got off I was not winching it in though the presure was on ,can't explain it the hook was ok and it seemed a good hold .This is not typical but on average session I will only land around two in every three runs so I know somthing is not right with me.
Any help is welcome I want to get better that is my main focus with this forum.
It's the barbel session this afternoon :j:j