What rig for barbel on natural baits?

Should the feeder be fixed or not?

I’VE never really fished small particle baits for barbel on my local River Severn, always preferring the pellet and boilie approach even in winter.

How should my rig differ for using maggots and casters as opposed to pellets?

Tim Swift, Pershore

THE rig won’t differ greatly for fishing small particles in the feeder, and it all depends on whether you want the feeder to run on the mainline or be semi-fixed to create a bit of a bolt rig effect. The latter is how some match anglers fish when after numbers of small barbel.

Check out the simple rig here, which runs inside a loop in the mainline and is semi-fixed…