The Sessions - January 2019
Work and bad weather
6 & 19 January – Bridigo Lake
My fishing for January amounted to two afternoon trips for Perch. Work had been full on and when I did get the chance to go the weather was bad with snow and frosty conditions, the kiss of death for Barbel
The first afternoon I tried Lobworms and lowered two floats into the margins and fed red maggots little and often. The only bite was a Roach and with half an hour left before dark I swapped both to King Prawn and had two bites, both Perch, a low 2+ and the biggest being 2-09, a fish that did not want its photo taken.
The second afternoon was very cold with sleet showers. I tried a different area for most of the session, fishing both on King Prawns and didn’t get a bite, with an hour to go I moved to the hot area and had two bites a Perch and a beautiful mid-double Mirror.
As I didn’t have much fishing to write about I’ve done a piece on winter Barbel fishing covering my thoughts and tactics.
Winter Barbel Fishing
As the nights draw in and the temperature drops I still look forward to being on the river targeting this magnificent fish, at this time of year they are packing on weight and the chance of a PB is high so it is well worth suffering the long cold nights.
Winter Barbel fishing is all about timing so in this piece I will talk through my approach, tactics and bait that so far has served me pretty well.
I have covered a lot of my approach in previous blogs and apologise for repeating myself but it’s well worth having it all in one piece 😊
The groundwork.
As with most fishing preparation is vital and mine starts as soon as I start looking at a new section of river. All rivers are different and being able to read and understand them is crucial for consistent results. I’ll spend time walking the section, if possible during the summer when the water is low and clear so that I can see the areas I want to target.
On the smaller rivers such as the Derwent, Warwickshire Avon and Ouse I can see the gravel runs, depressions, deeper areas and streamer weed and if I’m lucky the Barbel themselves. Once I’ve identified some likely areas I then get the leading rod out with simply mainline with a 1-2oz lead attached to feel the bottom and read the depth. I do this by lowering it in, once the lead hits the bottom I reel in until the top eye touches water, lift it out and measure the depth against the rod, for example if the lead is level with the spigot its six foot deep. Then it’s a case of lifting it up moving and lowering it back in again, obviously this can only be done in the margins unless I wade out but what I’m looking for are precise areas where there is a depression on a gravel bottom. Without doubt Barbel lay and feed in these areas and although not so crucial in normal conditions they are especially so in a flood which I’ll cover shortly.
On bigger rivers like the Trent it’s not quite so easy so I target the outside of a big bends and the straights just after them. I use the leading rod but this will be cast out and retrieved very slowly bumping the lead along the bottom, with practise you can start to recognise the resistance and understand when its being dragged up from a deeper area or falling into one, when the deeper area is found I clip up, reel in, recast so that the area is identified, generally on a bend this won’t be far out and I can then fish and bait up accurately.
I can hear people saying “why don’t you buy a Deeper Pro” and I agree on the Trent they would be priceless and will save a lot of time, so an investment will be made.
The tackle
Most of my winter Barbel fishing is on the Tidal Trent, big, bleak, at times dangerous but I love the place. To tackle a big river like this I use the Free Spirit Hi S HW Barbel rods, they are 13 foot, 2.75 test curve, this sounds heavy but when you consider sometimes using 10-12oz leads in a flood they are perfect and I’ve had no problems with fish under the rod tip as they are very forgiving, an all-round excellent rod.
Reels are medium Shimano baitrunners loaded with RM-Tec 15 pound line in brown, simply the best mainline I’ve used.
My standard set up for the Trent is a fixed lead; generally in winter 5-6oz is ok but as already stated much heavier is needed in a flood. A hook length of five foot, made with a long length of fluro carbon tied to a small tear drop ring, I use the Palomar knot at both ends. I then tie a 3 inch section of soft braid to the ring with a loop knot with a size 10 hook attached. Before casting I attach a pva bag to the hook, although its mesh there is enough air in it to hold the rig up then as the air comes out the bag sinks slowly in the flow and lands with hook length straight on the bottom, perfect. A superb rig that took me season to get right and never lets me down.
Bait.
You may remember I was asked to test a boilie for Madbaits four years ago, at the time we called it River Spice and it was fantastic from the start catching me loads of fish. During that first year we changed the name to Pandemic simply because it caught everything that swims. I’ve continued to catch loads on it ever since and it is my go-to bait.
In normal river conditions I favour a 10mm bait with a pva bag of pellets and crumb, however I’ve continued to experiment with bait size and quantity and found on certain days some work better than others so it worth changing if things aren’t going well, this season double 15mm has worked well.
In a flood I tend to go bigger with the hook bait, double 18mm worked well last winter or a big lump of Garlic Spam.
My pva mix has to be right for my confidence and again I continue to experiment but this season it has consisted of mixed 2-4mm pellet, dry boilie mix, crumbed boilie soaked in Pandemic glug overnight. This makes a nice sticky mix that doesn’t melt the pva and creates enough smell to drift down in the flow without over feeding the swim.
I have used maggots to good effect but to be honest the boilies are so consistent I don’t feel the need to change.
Weather conditions
If you have a bait in the water you always have a chance but timing is everything in winter Barbel fishing in my opinion.
There are times when you are better targeting other species. The kiss of death is prolonged cold, frosty weather, clear skies and a bright moon. I recount the winter of Dec-14, I drove up full of confidence in those conditions thinking I knew it all, when I arrived there was one of the locals Dave, a lovely fella and veteran on the Trent, who told me not to bother and to drive home again, now I’d driven 74 miles and thought he was talking rubbish and I said “I never blank”, he laughed and went home while I set up. Sure enough the sky was clear and minus 2 degrees and I blanked, a lesson learned. With weather conditions as described I now go Perch fishing.
My ideal conditions are a rise in air temperature which doesn’t need to be much, cloudy and southerly / westerly winds, it only needs to lift the water temperature a little for the Barbel to start feeding and great catches can be had. Some of my friends get obsessed with the water temperature, I can honestly say I’ve never taken it in England and make my assessment by the weather. The rise does not need to be much but it makes all the difference, even after a prolonged cold spell a couple of slightly warmer days will make me load the car, if there is rain and a big south westerly wind I’m looking to book annual leave and get on the river.
Floods
This can be a fantastic time to be on the river but also has its problems and risks. Barbel love floods and will lose all their caution and feed freely but I still believe location is key and all the preparation described above pays dividends. You will see Barbel rolling right in the main flow with the river steaming through but there is no chance of placing a rig there. I fish in the depressions and deep margins found while leading around if I can hold bottom there. Failing that I look for slack areas just of the main flow, this will create a crease where a bait can be placed and the Barbel will be found resting out of the flow.
A rising river can be brilliant but has its problems with the amount of leaves, weed and debris coming down catching on the mainline. Regular recasting after clearing the lines will have to be made but it does pay to keep going.
I recount a trip to the Derwent this season that encompasses all the above. I went there as the rivers were rising fast and I thought the Trent would be unfishable for a day or so. The Derwent tends to drop off quite quickly so I drove the 95 miles up the M1. When I arrived I found the river steaming through and full of rubbish, I tried a rig in a depression I’d had a lot of success in and couldn’t keep a rig in the water with a 10oz lead.
After the initial panic and disappointment I put on the 2oz lead and walked the section again. Now I know it like the back of my hand but wanted to check again, after leading every spot I was about to give up when I noticed a crease I’d not seen before at the top of the section. This was created by the high water coming off the back of an island creating a slacker area tight to the margin, I lowered the lead in and bingo, gravel and 8 foot deep and I’d never noticed it with the river at normal level. I lowered two rigs on the spot, one with double 15mm Pandemic and one with a third of a tin of meat. In the slacker water the rubbish on the line was not so bad and I was full of confidence.
Just after midnight the meat rod smashed over and I had an epic fight in the flow with a fish very dear to my heart at 13-03.
A dropping river is the time to make hay, as it drops the rubbish gets less, rigs are in place longer and I’ve had my best flood water sessions. I recount a Trent session with a good friend of mine again where my preparation made the difference. We chose our swims and I knew mine had a large depression in front of me where barges used to turn around creating a bowl on the bottom. In a flood the Barbel drop into it keeping them out of the main flow as it goes over them. I’ll help anyone and was happy to give my pal some of my bait and end tackle, however location was the key as I went on to catch 11 Barbel in the evening with many being doubles.
There are risks and have been times when I’ve nearly fallen in on the muddy banks, had the water rise so quickly its almost lapping the bedchair and even seen a chaps car slide towards the river luckily saved by us all so great care has to be taken but it’s well worth the effort.
The session
When I start my session I bait up sparingly, for example a Trent session would see me put 20 boilies over the area but my little edge that I use in all my Barbel fishing is to then walk downstream and every 10 paces throw a boilie in along the bait line, I’ll go as far down the section as I can until the river contour changes or other people are fishing, this without doubt draws Barbel up from downstream to the baited area and I’m convinced has caught me a lot of additional fish. On the Derwent it was so effective it was almost embarrassing how many doubles I was catching.
After each fish I’ll top the swim up with a few more, another little trick I picked up years ago, you can put to much bait in but you can’t take it out.
As we come into my fifth winter I’ve had some amazing sessions to go with the blanks that taught me along the way. In the most atrocious cold conditions I’ve had catches of up to 9 doubles in a night, with 5 being common.
I’m fishing a new section of the Trent this winter and have applied all the above, I didn’t start until October so have had to do the preparation with higher water and contend with huge tides, however it has paid off massively as I’ve had three 14’s and numerous doubles in three sessions and really hope to break my PB this winter.
Give these tactics a try and hopefully your results will improve, until next month tight lines and be lucky😊
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