| KEVIN PERKINS | |
Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can. |
BAR-BULL Oh well, designer fishing is well and truly with us. First it was carp, of course, but that kudos has begun to wear a bit thin, probably diluted by giving everybody access to carp through commercial fisheries. And now, to fill that vacuum, the ‘old whiskers’ hunters have moved in. But the barbel boys haven’t just joined up to the Bivvy/Boilie/Braid Brigade, oh no. If you thought carp fishermen were elitist, these anglers have not just moved the goal posts; they have also changed the game as well! It is amazing to se the amount of dedicated tackle a barbel angler now needs that just wasn’t available before. There is specialist equipment of all kinds, which only now has been found to be necessary, or indeed available to deal with these hard fighting and elusive specimens. The number of new types of rods alone that have been completely missing is truly amazing. And the speed in which they have had to be developed and marketed is a tribute to the awareness of the manufacturers in responding to this rapidly growing branch of our sport. Such is the explosion in new products, baits and techniques; it is nothing short of a miracle that any fish were ever caught before if the tackle available fell so far short of the required standard. Moving on, the current topic of concern we have to deal with is the thorny question of these fishes’ natural habitat, and those looking after the barbel’s welfare, who are outraged at the apparently heinous crime of stocking barbel in stillwaters. I may be a simple soul, but the overall outline of barbel and gudgeon are almost identical, yet the latter is even happy to reside in canals, so it can’t be a simple question of hydrodynamics. I mean, carp and bream, not the most streamlined of fish, have adapted from lakes to rivers, and going the other way, stillwater chub have become something of a sought-after target. Perhaps the barbel boys are trying to ally their quarry with something more upmarket like salmon. Here is a fish, which certainly enjoys moving through fast water when it spawns, but spends most of its life in the sea. Now while there may be tidal currents around the coast, to all intents an purposes, the areas where salmon live the majority of their lives is not exactly a fast paced maelstrom, so they certainly don’t need moving water to thrive. One answer may well lie in a little noticed forum thread posted by Frothey regarding ‘Lake Acreage’ where there is a link to calculate the area of a water. Interestingly, Andy Nellist (I am genuflecting and tugging my forelock as I write the great man’s name) has used that link to calculate that Wilstone Reservoir works out to be 111 acres. This lake is roughly square, and therefore each side of the bank would equate to being 732 yards long. Now, let’s relate this to fishable water. If we call the ‘Road’ bank 700 yards and the ‘Pier’ bank 500 yards (the only two fishable areas at Wilstone) and assume a realistic casting range of 100 yards, we can deduce that it is possible to cover 120,000 square yards of water, that is one hell of a lot of fishing, wouldn’t you say! Except that at 111 acres, the total area of water at Wilstone is 537,240 square yards, so that means 78% of the water is unreachable and therefore, unfishable! What has all this to do with barbel you ask? It’s all a question of access. If you keep the barbel in rivers, preferably in syndicated waters, you can easily fish between the banks, and therefore cover all the water. The rivers are merely a collection of ponds effectively sectioned off by weirs, and unless something similar to salmon ladders are fitted, it means the barbel are conveniently trapped in a relatively small area, in which the lucky angler has almost 100% access. Now, of course, if you were daft enough to stock ‘old whiskers’ in a reservoir like Wilstone, or any other similar stillwater, the poor old barbel angler is already going to be at a huge disadvantage of only having a one in five chance of even having any fish in his swim. Those sort of odds are not going to enhance his reputation at all – you can’t even begin to call yourself a barbel angler if you can’t even catch any! Seems that after purchasing all the ‘right’ kit, these modern day barbel anglers have elevated themselves to a position above us mere mortals, and having attained that standing, they have a right to demand and expect instant success. The thought of having to sit around a lake for days or weeks catching nothing just isn’t an attractive proposition at all, blanking doesn’t seem to be a welcome option. And finally, the one thing that assures me that barbel anglers are not quite as precious as they are cracked up to be, is that they haven’t yet got their own Forum category on FM, but I suppose it can only be a matter of time….. |
