Paul Garner
Make my special hookbait for big autumn barbel
RIGHT now is my favourite time of the year for barbel fishing.
With the shortening days and dropping water temperatures the barbel will be feeding hard in readiness for the colder months ahead. They are also likely to be more spread out and not stacked up in weir pools like they have been for much of the summer.
Most of my barbel fishing will be short evening sessions on local rivers. A couple of hours at the right time of the day are much more effective than slogging it out for hours on end.
GRAB AND GO
Normally, I will know in advance that I am going to grab an evening session on the river, but this still means that I like to use baits that are ready to go at the drop of a hat.
Hemp, for example, is prepared in advance and frozen in four-pint bags so that all I need to do is take a bag out in the morning and allow it to defrost.
Pellets are my other go-to convenience bait. I will have a tub containing a couple of pints of 10mm baits for loosefeed, and a tub of mixed pellets loaded into PVA sticks to attach to the rig.
Finally, a tub of my special pellet hookbaits seals the deal and we are off!
BAIT AND WAIT
Even on a short session I will use the same ‘bait-and-wait’ tactics that work so effectively for barbel on longer trips. The first job is to introduce a pint of hemp and three bait droppers of pellets on my chosen line. This bait will prime the swim and start to lay down a scent trail. By the time I am set up and ready to fish, enough time will have passed for me to put the dropper to use again and top up with the same amount of bait.
Even if no bites are forthcoming it is essential to keep topping up the swim with the bait dropper. The tiny amount of bait introduced via a PVA stick
is enough to draw fish towards the hookbait, but not enough to really get them feeding – it is the loosefeed that will do this. Roughly every hour I will top up with some more hemp and pellets, ensuring that these land on the same line as the rig.
Fishing like this, you can often attract barbel from a long way downstream. This is especially true in the evenings, when the fish will be naturally be beginning to move upriver in the search for natural food. My aim it to use bait to funnel those fish to where I want to catch them, and not let them head past me.
HOOKBAITS
A small boilie or a drilled pellet are good hookbaits for these short sessions, but I think they can be improved. I like to make up a batch of special hookbaits that resemble a pellet in both colour, shape and smell, yet which are easy to hair-rig and will take a long time to break down.
Once again, preparation at home means that I can just load the gear into the car and go. Follow the steps on the left to create the ideal hookbaits.