Quest Baits Blog

Pat Gillett explains why you’ll catch more Barbel if you listen to the information your rod tops are giving you;

A nice Upper Trent double caught after making a change

With more and more carp anglers trying their hand at barbel fishing, I see lots of anglers fishing behind 2 rods with bite alarms, as they would do in carp fishing, and paying more or less no attention at all to watching the rods.

This is all well and good but by doing this you really are missing out on a lot of vital information that your rod tops are telling you. The alarms will only really tell you when a fish has taken line off the spool, i.e. when they have hooked themselves. Now by carefully watching the rod tops you can tell so many more things;

1. Slow bend rounds…. maybe lots of weed gathering on line…do I need to increase my hook length? continue reading…

One of 3 doubles in an afternoon when we got the timing right !

Through one thing and another I have not been able to get out fishing much lately and so last weeks trip to the Warwickshire Avon was my first session for nearly three weeks.

The river was about a foot above normal level and carrying a nice brown tinge to it. My only concern was that we may be a day late, has the river had dropped at least 2 ½ feet from the previous day and there would be a good chance that the barbel had fed hard with the extra water on. This proved to be the case, as myself and my good mate Geoff struggled for one barbel each.

24.10.09

A recent session really brought home to me how much luck can play in the capture of a good fish. We all like to think that all the fish we catch are down to things like angling ability and top notch baits etc, but sometimes pure luck can play a large part in success.

My latest bit of good luck came on my first visit of the season to the Lower Severn. I was fishing has a guest on a Midlands region Barbel Catchers Club ‘fish in’, on a stretch of the river which I had never even seen before, let alone fished, so it would be a case of hoping for the best and waiting to see what, if anything came along.

We met up at about 12.30pm and were greeted with leaden skies and persistent rain. The river itself was really low with very little colour (as are all of the rivers at the moment), so it would probably be a ‘scratching’ type day. The only plus was that at least the river was flowing, as at times of very low water the Lower Severn can sometimes appear as still as a lake. continue reading…

Over the years I have gone through many different types of swim feeder for my barbel fishing, from making them myself from film canisters and women’s hair rollers to the one that I use now which are the large Drennan oval feeders.I have used the Drennan ovals for about the last 10 years and I find their shape and adaptability to be second to none. The shape means that they hold well in the current without the rolling affect of a lot of round feeders. They are also very adaptable in the ways that they can be modified.

continue reading…