ARTHUR’S ARCHIVES

Inside fishing history

LOOK at modern angling history and it’s easy to assume that barbel had always been available to fish for on a nationwide basis – but that’s a long way from the truth.

A stroll down Angling Times’ memory lane is an eye-opener, and a headline declaring that the paper itself was responsible for introducing the species to the previously barbel-free waters of the Bristol Avon and River Welland caught my eye.

It was in October 1955 that a ‘southern trout river’ – possibly only the upper Kennet fitted the bill – wanted barbel, and other coarse species, removed.

To save them being simply destroyed, Angling Times had them netted, with some heading west and others north east.

I’ve not heard of any River Welland whiskers being caught for eons, but, for many years at least, the species flourished on the streamier sections of the Avon. Ray Mumford, the famous match angler, held the river record for a while with a fish caught in a match and, in more modern times, Martin Bowler featured some wonderful Avon barbel in his magazine features.

My first double came from the picturesque Lacock stretch, a 10lb 3½oz fish that was caught while filming for Tight Lines.

Another Tight Lines Bristol Avon feature saw me land possibly my biggest barbel

– I say ‘possibly’ because I couldn’t find my scales. When Martin saw the piece he said he recognised the fish as one he’d caught the previous season at 12lb 7oz. As mine was a winter capture, it probably wouldn’t have weighed less. Sadly, I don’t have any photos of either catch – filming is ‘as live’, with no place for stills photography!

Predation has been blamed for the decline in Avon barbel but, as on all rivers, flows will have declined and as a species not naturally in the river, perhaps recruitment wasn’t what it could have been. Hopefully, with help, they’ll bounce back.

“The species flourished on the streamier sections of the Avon”