Nick wrote;

Hi Pat,
Hope you don’t mind me mailing you, have picked up your mail address from the Quest baits website. I have posted a blog along the same lines as this but I was wondering if you could recommend one of Shaun’s baits for barbel along with a pellet. I am fishing the Ouse around Bedford this year for the big girls and wanted something they have not seen before and could start putting in to get them used to it. Any recommendations?
Many thanks,
Nick

 

Hi Nick

Living in Wolverhampton I am central to a number of rivers and the ones that I have fished for the last two winters (whilst using Quest) were the Lower Severn, the Upper Trent, the Warwickshire Avon and the River Dove. None of the stretches are particularly prolific but in general the average size of the fish is pretty good, although nowhere near as good as yours will be on the Ouse at Bedford.

Due to work commitments I generally get out once or twice a week in the winter (don’t usually start until October), for a session on the river, which is usually from about 1pm to 8pm.
Because of the relatively short sessions I fish, it is important to have utmost confidence in the baits you are using.

I’ve used numerous different baits over the years to try and tempt the larger barbel from the rivers, and the most successful that I have found is a combination of the special crab boilies together with the paste.

On all the rivers I fished, I have found the special crab plus boilies were equally successful whether they were in flood or at normal level.

I found the best to be a ‘whittled down’15 mil boilie wrapped in the paste with a p.v.a stringer of three half baits fished in conjunction with a pellet feeder. If roaming around with the lead I would do the same with a 6 half bait p.v.a. stringer.

I have had double figure fish (and on a couple of occasions using 2 rods, I have had 2 doubles on at the same time) on the special crab from the four rivers mentioned above and although Shaun won’t thank me for saying this (lol), all without any pre-baiting.

On a number of occasions the fish I caught were the only ones to be caught on the stretch being fished which goes to show the effectiveness of the bait. My mate used another ‘higher profiled’ companies bait and my results on the crab on average have produced 3 doubles to each of his.

So the Special Crab would be my starting point, but if it is a ‘pressurised’ stretch of river you are going to fish then I would also think about looking at something totally different such as Shaun’s Liver B8 .   I have always done well for barbel in the past using liver flavourings and being as this bait is a meat based bait containing no fish meal it will be totally different to anybody else’s.

One thing that I have noticed with the use of boilies for barbel (during the winter anyway) is that personally I have found that the frozen baits far outscore the shelf life baits. I reckon this is down to the fact that frozen baits give off a better flavour leakage which helps to create a flavour trail in the current. They also take a flavour better if you want to ‘glug‘ them for use in really coloured water.

Cheers, Pat

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