If you're reading this the chances are that you're a die hard fly angler but perhaps you also fish for other species using different methods. We've been asked by readers if we'd cover other forms of fishing too and our good friend Kris Kent wrote this piece about a day where he put the fly rods away and headed out looking for barbel.
I was looking back through my fishing diaries recently and noticed that as the trout season progresses the frequency and length of my fishing trips diminishes. Early season I’ll be getting out a couple of times a week, work permitting, and often from dawn till dusk. By the time I get to August it will be once a week at most and often just for a few hours at the back end of the day. This is partly dictated by the conditions. Early season hatches can come off at any time and fish often respond when they do, whereas through the dog days of summer the hatches and spinner falls tend to be more concentrated at the start or end of day with fish lying doggo during the hot bright afternoons. Mad dogs and Englishmen may come out in the midday sun but wild brown trout tend not to.
But I think this change is also down to a loss of motivation. I love fishing and particularly fly fishing for wild brown trout. After a long winter, as the closed season comes to an end, I am itching to get out on the water. I always book the first day of the season as holiday, if it doesn’t fall on a weekend, to make sure I can get out on the water. For weeks beforehand I’ll be making plans, preparing kit, buying flies, cleaning fly lines and checking the weather reports and river levels to maximise that first day on the river. I’ll often go out and walk the rivers to see what’s changed over the winter. My level of motivation is high. As the season progresses my early season appetites are sated. I usually catch a few fish and hopefully I catch a few nice trout. I get to fish a few new beats or rivers. I catch up with old friends and make a few new ones. I discover some new fly patterns and fishing techniques. So by August that drive to go fishing has diminished. If someone calls and asks if I want to go fishing I’ll jump in the car in a second but if it’s just me I might be more tempted to stay home and watch a film or go and dig up the spuds.
At these moments in your life they say that “a change is as good as a rest”. Last year I found myself in a similar mood, my mojo depleted, so I decided it was time to try something new. I have noticed in recent years that we anglers are becoming more catholic in our tastes and habits. Many trout fishermen are now fishing for grayling during the winter months once the trout season has closed. Some fly fisherman are using the skills honed catching trout to catch coarse species such as pike, dace, roach, chub and carp. I’ve always enjoyed a spot of trotting during the winter months. The anticipation of the float sliding away. Catching grayling, dace, roach or chub on a worm or maggot on light tackle is thrilling. I’ve been very lucky over the years to have caught most of the common freshwater species on either fly or bait. But last year I realised that I had never caught a barbel. I remember standing on the banks of a private stretch of the River Kennet near Aldermaston when I was a kid watching large shoals of barbel swaying to and fro in the current. The beat was never fished so they were confident in their surroundings. They looked magnificent. But I had never fished for them. So was this the opportunity to reinvigorate my fishing year?
I searched the internet for fishing guides who specialised in barbel. There aren’t many. I guess that coarse anglers are less inclined than game anglers to pay for guiding. The most prominent of the few I found was Steve Pope. Steve helped set up, and is chairman of, the Barbel Society. He runs barbel fishing holidays in the UK through the Caer Beris Hotel in Builth Wells and provides guided days on the rivers Severn, Teme, Wye and Kennet. Steve also writes in the popular angling press and has written and contributed to books on barbel and barbel fishing. The Kennet is very close to me so I dropped Steve a line.
Some time and several emails later Steve and I met on the banks of the Kennet downstream of Newbury. Despite our best efforts and promising conditions the barbel weren’t playing the game that day. I left a little despondent and disappointed but Steve cheered me up by promising a return bout next year. So mid August this year found me and Steve once more on the banks of the Kennet. The day was full of promise. The very hot, bright, humid days of July and early August had passed and recent rain had lifted the river levels. Recent reports were of fish being caught and Steve had had some success with other clients. The first thing that struck me when I went back to coarse angling is the amount of gear. When fly fishing pretty much everything for a day on the river fits into my vest and back pack. Some people manage with just a lanyard. It took me three trips from my car to our peg that day and I was travelling light. There was the bag full of reels and rigs and other paraphernalia: the rods, the bank sticks, the buckets of hemp and luncheon meat and casters, the chair, the lunch. I left the kitchen sink in the car in the end. God alone knows how many trips Steve had to make. Steve had arrived at the river before me and was already set up. A place for everything and everything in its place. This is a regular spot for Steve, a small syndicate he’s a member of, so he has got his routine off pat.
I unfolded my chair and set it next to Steve’s and set about putting up a rod whilst Steve started baiting up. It seems to me that barbel are a shy fish on the Kennet. They tend to lurk under overhanging trees and in amongst the roots where they feel safe, only venturing out into more open water to feed. So the trick is to get them to come out and feed. This involves laying down a bed of ground bait onto which you then cast your hook bait. The Kennet hereabouts is a relatively small river, no more than two or three rods across and the fish tend to be close into the banks so Steve uses a bait dropper to form a concentrated bed of ground bait just where he wants it rather than blanket bombing the swim with a catapult. In this case our target was just in front of an overhanging willow in about eight foot of water.
Having started to lay down some ground bait Steve joined me to rig up the terminal tackle. If you’ve ever looked around a coarse angling shop you’ll know that there is a multitude of tackle that can be used to catch fish. Steve likes to keep things simple. Barbel are bottom feeders so we wanted to fish our bait, casters, hard on the river bed in amongst the ground bait. So we fished either a heavy ledger or a feeder, to keep things on the bottom and stable in the fast flow, with a longish hook length to keep the ledger or feeder away from the bait and the spooky fish. A bit like fishing a long tapered leader to keep the fly as far from the end of the fly line as possible. We varied the length of, and material used for, the hook length and the hook size until we started to get bites. The barbel on this beat get well into double figures and are powerful fighters in the fast currents so we were fishing either 15lb weighted braid or fluorocarbon with heavy duty specialist barbel hooks in sizes 12 or 14 with the casters superglued to a ‘hair rig’ that leaves the book exposed to aid hook ups.
So that’s the technical bit out of the way. With the ledger cast out and allowed to drop in just under the willow we could sit back and relax. Steve doesn’t use bite indicators. Barbel bites tend to be unmissable using this method. You watch the rod tip and wait for it to lunge round hopefully catching the rod before it disappears into the river.
The only downside of this method is that it can be a little boring but you can’t really relax. You are sitting watching the rod tip hour after hour waiting for the slightest twitch or knock that might herald a bite. You can’t take your eye of the rod because when it goes it goes. It can also be slightly hypnotic as the rod tip rhythmically pulses from side to side as the current pushes on the line. So Steve and I passed the time chatting, telling stories and eating sandwiches, pork pies, cake and drinking coffee.
Steve is great company. He’s led an interesting life and knows a great deal about our foe, the barbel. We also share a lot in common through his involvement in the Barbel Society and mine in the Grayling Society and Wild Trout Trust. So the day passed quickly despite the fact that the barbel didn’t seem to be very interested in our tactics. I thought I saw one good knock but it might have just been a fish or some debris catching the line.
Steve kept himself busy by also bating up another peg just upstream of us, his Plan B peg. He was determined to get me a fish this visit, having blanked last year, so he was ground baiting this other peg with hemp seed and luncheon meat rather than casters.
I was warned that fish often take when the ground bait goes in, so as Steve baited up the swim I kept a close eye on the rod. Steve was just retrieving the bait dropper when the rod twitched. I thought Steve might have caught the line but then it twitched again. I lifted the rod to find there was something on the end of the line. But what? It came in quite quickly so I doubted it was a barbel. Steve reached down with the net and then laughed. So much for “a change is as good as a rest”. It was a wild brown trout of about twelve ounces
As we hadn’t had anything apart from the trout in the morning after lunch Steve switched to a longer fluorocarbon hook length and a smaller hook in case the fish were spooked by the larger hook and braid rig. It might have been my imagination but soon after this change we started to get some small knocks. They didn’t convert into proper bites but it raised our expectations. We passed the afternoon much as we had passed the morning, the only difference being me treating Steve to bottle of the finest local West Berkshire Brewery ‘Mr Chubb’s Lunchtime Ale’. Not much of a treat as I subsequently discovered that Steve doesn’t really like beer! We were treated to a flypast by a pair of kingfishers and distracted by a visit from the kids who live in the manor house adjacent to the river but otherwise the afternoon passed quietly and uneventfully.
Just as I was starting to think it was going to be a repeat of our first outing the previous year the rod twitched. In milliseconds both Steve and I were on the edge of our seats. As the hairs rose on the back of my neck the rod tip curved round purposefully. Before Steve could say anything I was on my feet with the rod in my hand. I remembered Steve’s advice from earlier not to strike but to lift into the fish. As I felt the weight of the fish on the end of the line it felt me and it turned heading powerfully back under the willow and towards the snags below it. I responded tilting the rod to my left and applied as much side strain as I dared in an effort to turn the fish. Steve had adjusted the drag on the fixed spool reel perfectly so that the fish was able to take a little line, as I maintained the pressure, but not so much line that it could snag me. Gradually the fish came out from under the willow and started to succumb to the power of the twelve foot barbel rod I had invested in specially. But then all of a sudden the fish was above me and heading for a willow on the opposite bank. It was now that I saw the fish, it looked huge as it surged upstream. The rod arched over to my right as I steered the fish away from the willows opposite and back downstream towards Steve, perched ready with his capacious landing net. The fish made one last thrust before its head came up and out of the water. The pulsating energy in the fish seemed to dissipate as it glided over the edge of the net.
Steve had the fish out of the water and onto the unhooking mat in one smooth movement. I wetted the fish as Steve removed the hook and prepared his camera for the money shot. I’ve never been a great judge of fish weight, especially when it’s a new species. Was it going to be into double figures? I lifted the scales so Steve could read off the weight. The fish felt huge to me. In a solemn tone Steve read off “Nine pounds and nine ounces”. I was at once elated and slightly disappointed. Proud to have finally banked a decent barbel but a little let down that it hadn’t tipped the ten pound mark. Steve looked happier than I did, grinning like the Cheshire Cat from ear to ear. We paused to take a couple of pictures before I got it back in the water.
As I held it in the cool waters of the Kennet it felt a dead weigh, lifeless and inert. I admired its stealthy muscular form, its gold and bronze tones, a fish perfectly adapted to its habitat. It looked up at me as its gills flared. It seemed like an age holding the fish as it revived. Then all of a sudden the fish was alive again. Energy pulsed through its body and it was ready for the off. I held onto its tail for one last moment as it moved off and then it was gone. Without any hurry it slid back into the watery depths no worse for the encounter. I dragged myself back up the steep bank and slumped into my seat, momentarily spent.
But I didn’t have any time to recover as Steve was already busy rebaiting the hook and getting it back in the water. If the barbel had switched on there was a good chance we might get another.
We did have one more bite from that swim an hour or so later. I felt the weight of the fish before the hook dislodged and the fish returned to the shoal. Was it a bigger fish? Could it have tipped ten pounds? I’ll never know. But I was happy enough. We held on till the light faded just in case another fish could be tempted but nothing troubled us. Steve and I had a last cast into Plan B peg on our way back to the cars just in case the cover of night might give the barbel some confidence to come out and feed. It hadn’t, they didn’t.
We sat and reflected on the day as the geese left the stubble fields behind us, honking rhythmically in V formation, flying low over the Kennet. A couple of bats flitting low over the water. It had been a tough day and the barbel weren’t as generous as Steve had hoped. But we had added another fish to my tally and a good one at that. We had shared a few stories and laughed a little, put most of the world’s ills to rights, and learnt a little along the way. And most importantly I had rekindled my mojo. Bring on the rest of the season.
You can get more information on barbel from The Barbel Society:
http://www.barbelsociety.co.uk/
Steve Pope can be contacted through his website:
http://www.stevepopebarbelfishing.co.uk/
Biography:
Kris Kent has been fly fishing and trotting for brown trout and grayling for over 20 years in the UK, Europe and Scandinavia. He is PR Officer for the Grayling Society and helps out The Wild Trout Trust with their online communications and events.