One of the interesting things about barbelfishing through the Autumn and winter is the amount of different baits that can be used to catch them, and how on some days they will favour one particular bait and ignore anything else. With this in mind it pays to take a small variety of baits with you so that you can in fact change or experiment to find the bait the barbel want whilst you are there. Just because you have a good catch on say pellet one day, don’t become stereotyped into thinking that this method will always catch you fish as the barbel can be contrary creatures at times. In fact i can think of many occasions over the last few winters where a change of bait has brought instant results.Also when fishing two rods less than 10 yards apart on different baits, i have had as many as six good fish on one bait whilst the other rod has remained motionless. (more…)
By Pat Gillett Towards the end of April I had a week on one of the Angling Lines venues called Long Lake. I have written an article on the weeks fishing on the Angling Lines’ website. Now although I didn’t catch any massive fish I did catch a few. But the main thing that the week brought home to me was how little things can make all the difference in fishing.
On Long Lake you book a swim for the week. Each swim has its’ own ‘end of swim marker’s’ which show the angler the exact area of water he has in front of him and should stop anglers encroaching on each other’s water.
I had got swim number 4 which was pretty much in the centre of the lake but also by far the narrowest part of the lake.I set up the marker float and plumbed the depths etc. About 10 to 15 feet back from the ‘end of swim marker’ I had an area that sloped from (left to right ) 12 feet deep to 14 feet deep. Now with the weather predictions I would have thought this was perfect so I marked up 3 rods plus the spod rod to fish this area. (more…)