I have fished the river Lot for almost six years now, mostly for barbel.
At first I tried the balls of groundbait techniques, along with the usual feeder. If I put in some groundbait the night before there were usually a few barbel hanging on in the swim the next day, sometimes a few more small balls of groundbait was like "ringing the dinner bell" and bites would follow soon after.
Now I have caught plenty of barbel I am getting a little lazy. Often I don't pre-bait a swim and frequently don't bother with grounbait of any solid form. Instead I rely on extra smell attached to the bait in the form of paste or glugs......and still catch plenty of barbel!
Recently I took it a stage further by adding a glug soaking material to the hook. When thinking how to do this I remembered a trout fly called the "Wooly Bugger! which had a body of chenille. I had found some old fashioned pipe cleaners in a craft shop (remember making animal shapes as a kid with these?), chenille on twisted wire.
After mounting the boilie on a hair rig twist a few wraps of the pipe cleaner around the hook shank, then cut off the excess. The fibres of the chenille stand up and when this is dipped in the glug will hold the flavour for some time.
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I had 5 small barbel on that arrangement, none could have swallowed the double boilie and all were hooked neatly on the Chenille fly.
So the "fly" has been Christened the "Wooly Stinker". Next I may try fishing it without the boilies!
Barbel are quite remarkable in their efficiency searching for food. If they can smell anything, they will find it!