MY SPECIALS GO AGAINST THE FLOW!
Home-made baits barbel love
MANY tactics and baits will catch barbel, but I like to create my own ‘special’ baits designed to work in a certain way.
These range from homemade boilies different from anything that you can buy, to pastes that leak off much more scent than normal, pulling barbel upstream even in flood conditions.
Why not use baits straight from the bag? Ready-made baits can indeed be customised, but there is a greater sense of achievement in formulating a plan and catching on a bait that you have made up yourself.
So here are a few of my favourite specials that work straight away, and that definitely give you an edge when prebaiting.
GO SQUARE
I use a lot of boilies in my barbel fishing – 10mm baits make ideal feed and hookbaits alongside a hemp and pellet attack.
To single out larger barbel, bigger boilies are called for – 18mm is the the optimal size for double-figure fish and if I am prebaiting it will be with these. By making my own specials I can change many of the characteristics of my boilies to increase their efficiency and offer the fish something different.
‘Anything but a round ball’ sums up my choice of boilie shape. Square baits are good, but ragged baits, easily made if you follow my 10-minute make, are even better. The soft inner core oozes attraction, while the tough skin is small fish-proof. Best of all, every bait is different and can be broken up to whatever size you want.
Why not change the colour or flavour of your baits too? I make wafter hookbaits either by moulding paste around a cork ball, or adding cork dust to my hookbaits before boiling them.
Barbel anglers don’t much like light hookbaits, but wafters and low-lying pop-ups give a brilliant edge on hard-fished stretches.
NATURAL ATTRACTORS
For the last few years I have been experimenting with using various natural foods in my boilies instead of artificial flavours.
This is nothing new – carp Paste around a cork ball – a buoyant bait.
anglers have been using similar baits for more than 30 years, but barbel anglers seem to have been a little slow on the uptake.
My experiments started with adding frozen krill to my boilies. The results were so encouraging that since those early days I have tried lots of other different fresh and frozen foods too. Squid and mussels have proved really effective when liquidised and added to the eggs. Crayfish meal has also been exceptional, and let’s not forget tinned tuna, pilchards and mackerel. These are all cheap to buy and will make your baits very different.
PASTE SPECIALS
If making your own boilies seems too much like hard work, why not consider using paste baits instead?
These soft baits can either be made up fresh on the bank, or prepared in advance and frozen. Bite-sized lumps of bait can simply be broken off and used as feed or on the hook.
Feed a few lumps of paste by moulding them around a length of PVA string tied to the hook to draw attention to the hookbait.
I know a lot of anglers fight shy of using paste, fearing that this soft bait will quickly break down and leave them with a bare hook, but this is easily overcome. Several companies make bait-savers that you can mould paste into and around to give a longer-lasting bait. Often, I will make up just a handful of boiled baits, just for the hook, and then feed paste, to get the best of both worlds.
When I tested the performance of my specials against regular baits – such as pellets, hemp and casters – several years ago I found that the average size of the fish I caught went up markedly, although the numbers did decrease too.
So, if a big barbel is your target, take my advice and make your bait a bit special!