Dave Harrell Float tips for barbel
You need to be patient to catch barbel on the waggler, says Dave Harrell!
LAST week we looked at the gear you need to fish for barbel with top and bottom-attached floats.
While that is a great way to catch them, we’re often faced with less than favourable conditions, which means we have to do it a different way in order to get the best from swims between 3ft and 10ft deep.
The best conditions for floatfishing on a river are when the wind is blowing upstream... not too strongly, but enough to keep your reel line behind the float and allow you to present your hookbait perfectly to the barbel down below.
Unfortunately, we rarely seem to get those perfect days and quite often we are faced with a downstream wind and, even worse, downstream and into your bank. This can make the use of top and bottom-attached floats impossible, and you are constantly fighting the wind and unable to keep a bow from forming in your line.
No self-respecting fish of any species will take a hookbait that is travelling through the swim faster than the speed of the current.
Another problem we are facing more and more these days is low and very clear rivers. Unless there is enough depth and pace to get the fish close to you, this results in them taking up residence further out in the river and, unless we’ve got the perfect conditions mentioned earlier, there’s only one way to attack these swims – with a waggler.
It’s no use trying to make light wagglers work in these situations, though.
You need big floats in order to not only beat the conditions, but also to cope with the 6lb and 7lb reel lines that are required in order to land big fish.