The Pleasure and the Pain of Fishing for Big Barbel – or Going Mad While Trying
Please forgive the sub-title of this little article, but it seems appropriate for me to call it such whilst I try to explain briefly the pains of fishing for above average sized barbel. I leave it for you to decide whether it is madness which reigns, or if the deep-rooted desire to catch bigger fish is worth the sometimes extreme lengths to which some of us will go to catch these wonderful beasts. 
I cast my own mind back to last summer when, after a very fruitful 1998 season, I decided to continue fishing the same stretch of the river Bristol Avon. I didn’t actually start my 1999 campaign until late June, due to holiday commitments, however, as it took me nearly a month and six evening sessions before I caught my first barbel of the season at 11lb 10oz. I didn’t let it concern me too much, especially as this was now my new personal best.
This fish was tempted by a Shellfish B5 boilie and the reasons for fishing this bait was quite simply due to the fact that a number of fishmeal boilies had been put into the river upstream on a not so well known private syndicate stretch complete with weir. The fish spend most of the summer in and around the weir, only dropping back downstream from time to time as the season develops.
Clearly thinking I was now onto a winner, you can imagine my frustration at having to wait another whole month and another six evening sessions for my next fish. I had also been introducing some of the Mike Wilmot Barbel Mix into the river at various times throughout the summer in the hope that I would wean the fish onto the mix, so I was very pleased with the next fish caught on the mix at 9lb 14oz. This fish was in superb condition and in true barbel style took me longer to land than the previous fish. 
I doubt if I am alone in reminiscing over the last few moments of the fight when a good fish wont lift its head up for the net with almost as much determination to get back down to the bottom of the river as when first hooked. That fish lifted the bobbin up to the butt with such speed I only just managed to get my hand on the rod in time to pull into the fish. Any later and the rod would have been pulled into the murky depths never to see the light of day again no doubt.
Time passed and it was soon September, another month had passed without as much as a whisper (or should I say whisker!) apart from the odd chub of 3.14 and 4.2. I was pulling my hair out (or was it falling out!) starting to think about pike and where I would be fishing in the coming winter, when whack, the rod hooped over and I was in to my third barbel of the year – and what a cracker at 9.8! A lovely fish and a completely different one to the August fish, but again falling to Mike Wilmot’s Barbel Mix.
After checking the photographs with Fishingmagic Mailing List member Dave Cooper, it was agreed that this fish was in fact Boris, complete with small black spot just behind its right side gill plate. Long may Boris grow and continue to give good sport to those who venture.
That barbel at 9.8, was the smallest and also the last fish of 1999. I gave up to concentrate on pike up until late December, when I ventured back out onto the river at a different location known to hold fish in reasonable numbers and which gave me one to two smaller fish per session up to the end of the river season. 
So, there you have it. Three good fish for approximately 20 sessions and what would amount to around 100 hours. Some people will balk at the effort put in for these three fish. Not me though, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Several other fish were landed from the stretch in 1999, to 13.6, so there is no doubt that I will return at some stage.
At the moment I am into my third barbel blank of the this new season fishing another river that, whilst again not known to hold numbers of fish, has some clonkers with reports of fish to 12.8 caught a season or two ago. I know I will struggle for my fish, but they will be hard earned and I will enjoy every minute of every capture.
Am I mad? I leave it for you to decide!
