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Mike Taylor must be the most beloved anglers’ landlord since Captain Parker down on the Avon, and for good reason. Mike has run a great anglers’ hotel at The Red Lion in Bredwardine since the 1980s, but from the 1990s he and his six miles of river have been at the heart of the Wye barbel revolution. I’m not sure Mike, a celebrated salmon angler, has ever caught a barbel, but he appreciates them, and that was not always the case with game anglers back then... and even sometimes today. In this regard alone, anyone who loves barbel and the Wye owes Mike a debt of gratitude.
I have called this piece a “Requiem” as it is highly probable Mike’s time at the helm of The Red Lion is approaching its end. I’ve known Mike closer to forty years than thirty, and even a man with an iron constitution deserves a break from late night bar service after so long a time. So we wish the great man well, but with some trepidation. What the future will bring is the question on many barbel anglers’ lips.
The past was certainly golden, even if in a vicarious, volatile sort of way. Some of the nocturnal japes the Lion has witnessed are not for me to record here... but the fishing is what should interest us most. Bob James rather grandly described what we were doing in the Nineties as something new, different and fresh, “The Wye Approach”. For once, I agree with him. Though I have fished scores of barbel rivers, the Wye is unique in the variety of water it offers, and the skills it invites. Sure, you can sit on a pool for a week, watching a rod tip, but if you are more bold, you can roam, wade, float fish, stalk, trundle, touch leger, sight fish and even fly fish. Use your imagination and the Wye will respond.
And, since the later Eighties, there have been exceptional anglers pioneering and perfecting these skills. Paul Ashton, Pete Smith, Roger Miller, Tim Pryke, Rob Olsen, Phil Humm, Big Simon are just some of the barbel maestros who have practised their magic along Beats 1 to 10 of The Red Lion water. I’ve been pretty close to all this, and I have witnessed some extraordinarily fine fishing in my time. I’ve also seen the fishery change dramatically.
Rewind thirty years and The Red Lion beats were exceptionally generous. There were a lot of fish that appeared suddenly, as if from nowhere. In 1986/7 there were hardly any barbel: by 1990, they seemed to be everywhere. How this happened I didn’t know then, nor do I know now. What I do know is that mounting angling pressure made those fish harder to catch, year upon year. If my love affair with the Lion has taught me anything it is that if barbel learn a lesson, that lesson is never forgotten. Every time visiting anglers “bagged up”, or “emptied a swim”, or whatever other tacky phrase you want to use, the fishery became that much harder for anglers coming on behind.
Now it is 2022, exactly thirty years since I led my very first “barbel course” at the Lion. I’m told that the resident anglers are having a very tough time of it this week past. I’m sorry, and I wonder why. It seems to me there are four possible explanations. One is the weather and the river conditions. The Wye is a killer in the winter. Rain and sleet in the Welsh mountains runs off, swells the Wye throughout its course, and drags down temperatures. There are simply weeks on end when barbel barely feed at all. Even if you are one of my “genius” Wye anglers, there’s not much you can do about that.
My second thought is that there might not be as many barbel as there once were. Certainly shoals look smaller, but this is random and subjective, I’m aware. I worry that recent years have seen floods biblical enough to push even mature fish around. Juvenile barbel might have been washed downriver for miles I fear. Barbel spawn in late May, just when the canoes first appear on the ankle-deep shallows where the eggs are being laid and fertilised. How many fry and fingerlings survive this springtime assault to grow on to mature fish? And how is the complete collapse of the once-carpeting ranunculus beds affecting smaller barbel especially? The deprivation of food and shelter must be damaging.
Thirdly, I am convinced that those barbel that do remain are thoroughly “wised up” to what we are doing. They know our game. They recognise the crunch of boot on gravel, the splash of the heavily loaded feeder. The thrust of the rod rest into the margins. The bombardment with pellets and boilies. The cars on the skyline. The calling up and down the river. Every seemingly small disturbance places you and the barbel further apart.
Which brings me to my fourth thought. My gut feeling is that back in the early days there might have been more imagination shown by many of the anglers who attempted to tame the Lion. Catching at the Lion was even then often a case of doing the wholly unexpected. A dead gudgeon on a size 6. A cluster of caddis grubs on a size 12. A creep along the shallows at 4.00am on a July morning, watching for barbel in six inches of water. Wading gently across the river to the fallen tree there, and mounting a gallon of maggots attack. But forgive me if I am wrong: this week, these things and more might have been done.
The only thing of which I am sure is that Mike Taylor oversaw some of the most noteworthy years in barbel fishing history. There are so many golden moments to look back upon, and I only hope the hope the future is as bright for the river, the barbel, and for dear Mike himself.
I have called this piece a “Requiem” as it is highly probable Mike’s time at the helm of The Red Lion is approaching its end. I’ve known Mike closer to forty years than thirty, and even a man with an iron constitution deserves a break from late night bar service after so long a time. So we wish the great man well, but with some trepidation. What the future will bring is the question on many barbel anglers’ lips.
The past was certainly golden, even if in a vicarious, volatile sort of way. Some of the nocturnal japes the Lion has witnessed are not for me to record here... but the fishing is what should interest us most. Bob James rather grandly described what we were doing in the Nineties as something new, different and fresh, “The Wye Approach”. For once, I agree with him. Though I have fished scores of barbel rivers, the Wye is unique in the variety of water it offers, and the skills it invites. Sure, you can sit on a pool for a week, watching a rod tip, but if you are more bold, you can roam, wade, float fish, stalk, trundle, touch leger, sight fish and even fly fish. Use your imagination and the Wye will respond.
And, since the later Eighties, there have been exceptional anglers pioneering and perfecting these skills. Paul Ashton, Pete Smith, Roger Miller, Tim Pryke, Rob Olsen, Phil Humm, Big Simon are just some of the barbel maestros who have practised their magic along Beats 1 to 10 of The Red Lion water. I’ve been pretty close to all this, and I have witnessed some extraordinarily fine fishing in my time. I’ve also seen the fishery change dramatically.
Rewind thirty years and The Red Lion beats were exceptionally generous. There were a lot of fish that appeared suddenly, as if from nowhere. In 1986/7 there were hardly any barbel: by 1990, they seemed to be everywhere. How this happened I didn’t know then, nor do I know now. What I do know is that mounting angling pressure made those fish harder to catch, year upon year. If my love affair with the Lion has taught me anything it is that if barbel learn a lesson, that lesson is never forgotten. Every time visiting anglers “bagged up”, or “emptied a swim”, or whatever other tacky phrase you want to use, the fishery became that much harder for anglers coming on behind.
Now it is 2022, exactly thirty years since I led my very first “barbel course” at the Lion. I’m told that the resident anglers are having a very tough time of it this week past. I’m sorry, and I wonder why. It seems to me there are four possible explanations. One is the weather and the river conditions. The Wye is a killer in the winter. Rain and sleet in the Welsh mountains runs off, swells the Wye throughout its course, and drags down temperatures. There are simply weeks on end when barbel barely feed at all. Even if you are one of my “genius” Wye anglers, there’s not much you can do about that.
My second thought is that there might not be as many barbel as there once were. Certainly shoals look smaller, but this is random and subjective, I’m aware. I worry that recent years have seen floods biblical enough to push even mature fish around. Juvenile barbel might have been washed downriver for miles I fear. Barbel spawn in late May, just when the canoes first appear on the ankle-deep shallows where the eggs are being laid and fertilised. How many fry and fingerlings survive this springtime assault to grow on to mature fish? And how is the complete collapse of the once-carpeting ranunculus beds affecting smaller barbel especially? The deprivation of food and shelter must be damaging.
Thirdly, I am convinced that those barbel that do remain are thoroughly “wised up” to what we are doing. They know our game. They recognise the crunch of boot on gravel, the splash of the heavily loaded feeder. The thrust of the rod rest into the margins. The bombardment with pellets and boilies. The cars on the skyline. The calling up and down the river. Every seemingly small disturbance places you and the barbel further apart.
Which brings me to my fourth thought. My gut feeling is that back in the early days there might have been more imagination shown by many of the anglers who attempted to tame the Lion. Catching at the Lion was even then often a case of doing the wholly unexpected. A dead gudgeon on a size 6. A cluster of caddis grubs on a size 12. A creep along the shallows at 4.00am on a July morning, watching for barbel in six inches of water. Wading gently across the river to the fallen tree there, and mounting a gallon of maggots attack. But forgive me if I am wrong: this week, these things and more might have been done.
The only thing of which I am sure is that Mike Taylor oversaw some of the most noteworthy years in barbel fishing history. There are so many golden moments to look back upon, and I only hope the hope the future is as bright for the river, the barbel, and for dear Mike himself.