Missed Barbel Bites

[keora]

I fished a small shallow river and had a barbel about four pounds legering over near the far bank. But I missed half a dozen barbel bites - the tip of the quiver tip is suddenly pulled down about a foot, it then springs back and the barbel's gone. I was using mostly a combination of a banded red robin pellet and a small piece of spam on the hook. Most of the time when I reeled in after the bite, they were still on the hook.

I imagine the bite was caused by barbel brushing against the line, but I'm not sure. What do people think, does anybody fish clear waters where they can actually seen what happens?

 

[john step]

I would put even odds that it wasnt barbel but chub which are notorious for this habit and inhabit the same places as barbel.

 

[keora]

I never thought of that. There are chub in the river, but when I fish there in river, the chub bites are generally quite delicate.

 

[john step]

I never thought of that. There are chub in the river, but when I fish there in river, the chub bites are generally quite delicate.

Exactly. On barbel gear they will mouth the bait and move off giving a bite into thin air. You can tell the barbel bites on a hair rig set up.
The barbel ones will bend the rod and keep going against a bait runner, or no bait runner and lost rod. The chub ones will spring back for thin air.
Trotting will sort the chub out?

 

[nottskev]

It's not often barbel bites are missed, and they tend to hook themselves - the "savage bite" some speak of is more likely the fish bolting having hooked itself.
Chub are indeed notorious for what you describe, especially when they tug at baits on a hair without taking the hook into their mouths.
As long as your bait is firmly fixed, and hair-rigged baits usually are, I'd suggest you leave the bait in after the type of bite you describe. It's likely your bait has just been tested and rejected by a chub. The barbel may well be the next fish to come to that bait, and is likely to hook itself for you or provide an unmissable bite.
If you keep recasting after these missed bites you may keep attracting chub to each fresh bait and not give barbel the chance to approach it and decide to take it.
By the way - you're lucky to have a chub "problem" - some rivers around here are very short on them.

 

[Philip]

One way to address those rapid big tug, strike to nothing bites is to upstream ledger.. tighen up to the lead putting a good bend into the tip then wait for it to spring back as the fish dislodges the lead and it bumps downstream. Strike hard to take up the slack and hook the fish.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

I too would venture to suggest that these were not barbel but chub bites. Chub are well known for mouthing hair rigged baits without taking the hook as readily as barbel.

 

[nottskev]

To put it another way, I've not really come across a problem connecting with barbel bites, but it's common to find tricky chub, and they can be very frustrating on occasions. Barbel, by contrast, will often hook themselves for you, even on rigs with little or no weight to hook themselves against. Free-lining or touch-legering with next to no weight, it's common that the first thing you know is you're playing the barbel and the "shall I strike at that or not" stage is a blur. Rolling baits like meat can be one occasion, though, when you have to pick bites out, but it's not usually at all difficult.

 

[Ged28]

I remember having a similar problem with chub on the Hampshire Avon. Legering cheese at the tail of a weir pool, the rod would shoot round, but nothing there. I partially solved it by squeezing a lump of cheese arond the line between reel and butt ring. The extra foot or so of line for the fish to take seemed to encourage them to hold on that bit longer. Things have moved on in the last fifty years, so maybe try a bobbin type butt indicator, weighted just enough to counteract the flow and still provide a decent drop to the indicator.

 

[keora]

Thanks for all the advice, the bites must have been caused by chub. I rarely catch chub in summer mainly because I'm using 10 lb line, anything less and it's more likely that I'll lose any barbel - the river's got lots of overhanging trees and snags. I get more chub in winter, and the bites can be quite delicate.

 

[john step]

While on the subject of chub bites.
I read once somewhere about a stinger below the main hook bait for chub. The idea is that the chub mouths the lump of cheese etc but doesn't notice the short "hair" behind the bait with a couple of maggots on it.
A bit like a stinger behind a lure when predators are following but not taking.
Who knows it may work.

 

[John Aston]

The last barbel bite I nearly missed was when it pulled the rod off the rest and into the river

 

[@Clive]

Fishing the Charente has given me a new perspective on barbel behaviour. It was said that barbel take a bait and immediately turn and rush downstream causing the famous three foot twitch. In the Charente it is so clear that I can see everything that is going on 12 foot down. Unlike chub, carp and bream the barbel almost always travel upstream when feeding. They only vary slightly from side to side. Carp and bream will move more randomly, chub more so. This means that if the hookbait is not in line with the barbel's route it will be missed. Once the barbel reached the upstream part of the baited area, it turns, drifts downstream and then resumes its upstream hoovering up a new track. Shoal barbel do the same, but in a loose formation. Solitary barbel in an unbaited stretch are more random, but when lose bait is available they are more systematic.

Now, the interesting part; when I see a barbel take my bait I don't see any indication on the rod except in a rare few cases, what Walker described as a trembling of the tip. This is caused if you have a swivel or shot on the hook link, dragging across the gravel. When the barbel takes my bait whether it is meat, boilie, maize ot worm it continues to travel upstream still feeding. It is only when the fish gets to the end of the leader do I get the big indication. Basically the leader tightens, hooks the fish and it bolts. Sometimes I see the fish drop the bait before then and I would never have seen an indication. The longer the hook link, the more chance of a dropped bite. I started putting a BB shot about 3" - 4" from the hook and using shorter hook links. That has worked fine. I am toying with the helicopter rig, 6" to 8" coated braid hook link with tungsten putty on the hinge for next summer's campaign.

Sometimes when fish were drifting back downstream they caught the mainline and gave a 'line bite'. Because shoal numbers are much lower over here it doesn't happen often.

 

[Keith M]

My favourite Barbel stream (see below) is fairly narrow and often very clear and I remember one day a guy was trotting for Barbel using small cubes of luncheon meat from the swim upstream of me, and at the end of his trot his bait would invariably come off when he started to retrieve his float and his bait would sink onto the gravel right in front of me being followed down by one or two Chub, and the first chub to pick it up would invariably shoot off to the other side of the swim away from the others around it with the bait still visible between its lips before attempting to swallow it. Just as a sparrow picks up a piece of bread in its beak from a lawn and flys up to a branch or fence away from the other sparrows before attempting to swallow it in relative peace.

I remember thinking that this happening right in front of my eyes just confirmed what I always suspected about these classic pull arounds which don’t result in a hooked fish; because if the bait had been attached to a hair then the hookpoint would have still be hanging on the outside of its mouth as the Chub moved off with it held in its lips resulting in the classic take that pulls your rod tip right around without the fish being hooked.



Keith

 

[Keith M]

.

 

[@Clive]

I think chub and roach feed differently to barbel. They are more sight feeders than browsers and both species snatch at baits as Keith describes. Barbel, when not intercepting suspended nymphs or shrimps being carried downstream are more like the vacuum cleaners you see on ads on tv. They hoover up a narrow channel then return and do the same up another narrow channel. Carp, bream and chub seem to be more aware of what is around them and will deviate to something they have spotted, but Boris just ploughs his own furrows.

 

[Alan Whitty]

Well,here goes,I used to fish a stretch of the Lea below Hatfield,it had a good head of barbel,chub too,one evening I fished what was considered to be a flyer for barbel,I fished meat on the lead I lost count how many bites I missed and I could see the barbel moving over the baited area(not enough to see them take the bait),the rod was going two feet round before spring back,or I struck and didn't connect,the solution was to hold the rod and follow the bite as it went round,so as not to allow too much pressure being felt by the taking fish,which then,instead of obviously them holding the bait between their lips,they swallowed it,several barbel were taken like this,yet if I put it on the rest the missed bites returned,float fishing was by far the best method...

 

[Keith M]

On the small Barbel rivers and streams that I am usually fishing I rarely miss any Barbel bites however I don’t usually use feeders and I’m usually ‘touch’ legering with a finger held over my line and using shortish 5 to 10 inch hooklengths with link legers using half an ounce weights down to a few SSGs; however now I’ve said that you can bet that I’ll start missing them now

Keith

 

[Alan Whitty]

Keith,these days I rarely miss them either,however barbel are not as easy to catch as is often quoted,though often hooking themselves,on the same venue you frequent they often manage to 'avoid' your bait whilst eating loads of freebies...

 

[nottskev]

Well,here goes,I used to fish a stretch of the Lea below Hatfield,it had a good head of barbel,chub too,one evening I fished what was considered to be a flyer for barbel,I fished meat on the lead I lost count how many bites I missed and I could see the barbel moving over the baited area(not enough to see them take the bait,the rod was going two feet round before spring back,or I struck and didn't connect,the solution was to hold the rod and follow the bite as it went round,so as not to allow too much pressure being felt by the taking fish,which then,instead of obviously them holding the bait between their lips,they swallowed it,several barbel were taken like this,yet if I put it on the rest the missed bites returned,float fishing was by far the best method...

They'd been talking to the chub!

I fish some swims where the noise of loose fed pellets brings the barbel up out of upstream trailing branches, and they take a dropping bait. Or try to - to get the bait in their underslung mouths, they do a peculiar rolling, pirouetting rise. If you ever fish a swim where grayling are in deep water under your feet, you see them do similar when they come up twisting and turning to take feed as it starts to fall. It's all very exciting, but the barbel often miss the bait but get foulhooked, and that's not what you want in the snaggy swims where they act like this as you risk having uncontrollable barbel on a short line.

Some fair points have been made about how barbel can hook themselves against a rod top or a lead or feeder. But I fish a reservoir with big barbel and find that even on a slack freeline, with nothing on the line but a bait, the first I know about it is often when the rod wrenches round and I'm playing fish, something that happens in river slacks, too. Usually, hooking a barbel is the least of the challenges they present.