CLOSE QUARTERS

By Stuart Wortley

An 11-7 from a small river for Stuart Wortley

Go to Next Article; Trundling by Pete Tesch

The rivers I fish regularly don’t offer the opportunity to be able to watch the barbel’s reaction to my bait and end tackle. Sure, some stretches of the Teme and occasionally the Middle Severn, are shallow and clear enough to make spotting fish possible but the fish are so nervous during daylight that the shallows are not regular feeding areas until night-time and it is much less frustrating to fish the deeper stretches until dark.

However, one river that I did fish regularly for a while a few years ago, and which was suitable for fish observation, was the Upper Thames. For anybody who is not familiar with this river, it is a gin clear chalk stream from its source somewhere near Cirencester and for the first forty miles or so, as it winds its way through the Cotswolds over miles of clean gravel downstream to Lechlade. Here the river widens and slows in pace dramatically and is a haven for weekend boaters. I had no great interest in these lower reaches, albeit this is still classed as the Upper Thames. No, the area I wanted to concentrate on was well upstream of Lechlade, where the river was approximately thirty to forty feet wide ranging in depth from six to twelve inches down to ten feet deep holes. Streamer weed and cabbages covered more than 50% of the river bed but for the most part fish could be observed quite easily moving out of the weedbeds and over the clean gravel. All I had to do was bait up the likely looking clear patches and wait for the barbel to move in. Sounds easy but in reality it was far from it.

My usual tactics were to get down to the river late afternoon with the sun still high in the sky. I would then spend three or four hours armed with a bucket of hemp, a pair of Optix Cormorants and a wide brimmed hat, either fish spotting or looking for likely looking feeding areas. I didn’t actually spot many fish and usually ended up just looking for likely feeding areas. The areas I chose to bait up were usually clean gravel runs, preferably sloping into, or from, a deeper area and with plenty of adjacent weed cover. Using a bait dropper in the faster swims or hand feeding in the slower areas, a couple of pints of hemp were deposited in each of the clear areas. I then walked the banks over the next few hours, revisiting the baited areas, all the time on the look out for barbel either naturally drifting in and out of the weed or purposely feeding on my baited areas.
The head of barbel turned out to be extremely low, and in a total of fifteen trips, I only managed to spot fish (barbel that is) on eight or nine occasions, (although on a couple of the trips the river was coloured) and all the fish I found were limited to only four swims in the three mile stretch. I did identify two swims where they could be found frequently and these subsequently were the only areas I managed to catch from.
Some of the behaviour I observed I found very enlightening, however for everything I seemed to learn, it brought at least another question - I shall explain.

On my first trip I found an area of clean gravel in about four feet of water, immediately downstream of a fifty-yard shallow run. This looked an ideal feeding area and I hand fed a couple of pints of hemp and watched and waited for about ten minutes. A few small chub immediately moved in on the bait but no barbel. I decided to move on and come back in an hour. As I walked downstream about twenty five yards, I spotted two barbel swimming upstream quite quickly and purposefully. At first I thought they had been spooked by some activity downstream, such was their pace, but I could see no obvious reason for it. I turned and followed the fish upstream to watch where they were headed and was amazed when they stopped dead in their tracks and started feeding on the hemp I had put in ten minutes ago. I could only surmise that some of the particles of the hemp had been washed downstream such that the barbel instinctively knew to go hunting for the bed of bait. I had heard of similar behaviour when heavily flavoured meat was dropped in the water well upstream of fish. But the hemp was not flavoured? Obviously hemp has a much stronger attraction than I had ever imagined. I also wonder, had I droppered the bait in, and hence contained the bait within a tighter area, would it have had the same effect in pulling the fish from at least twenty-five yards downstream in such a short space of time?
Although the fish weren’t huge, between 5 and 7 lb, they were the only ones I had seen, so I decided to go back to the car and fetch the rest of the gear.

When I returned they were still feeding confidently, so I threw in a small handful of hemp six or eight yards upstream and let it drift down so as not to spook them. Fine they still seemed quite happy. I then threw a small piece of meat in at the head of the swim where it would roll down to the feeding fish. As it slowly worked it’s way downstream, one of the fish sensed it and moved upstream to investigate and without hesitation took the meat and then went back to feeding on the hemp now well lodged in the gravel. Their behaviour had also changed from half an hour previously, when there was a pint of hemp in the swim, they were feeding heavily heads down. By now what remained was lodged between the gravel and they were moving around the swim far more, searching out the remaining hemp and dislodging gravel to get at it. I decided to find out if they were as happy to take static meat, so I threw another piece in, a bit further across the river where the flow was slower. It moved steadily for about ten feet then stopped, presumably in a small depression or some other not readily obvious feature that caused the flow to be that little less. It stayed there for about forty-five seconds before one of the fish sensed it, moved up stream and across to within a foot of the meat, looked at it for perhaps two or three seconds then went up to it and swallowed it. No problem! Time for a hookbait. I cast out a similar piece of meat about ten yards upstream and worked it down the swim slowly so as not to disturb the fish. The fish sensed the bait within about 15 seconds of it hitting the water and one started to swim upstream to investigate. When it got within about six feet of the bait it stopped. The bait was still trundling very slowly downstream but he decided something was not right and moved away across the river into the streamer weed. The bait then came to a stop so I left it alone to see if the fish would come back for another look but he seemed very nervous and stayed out of sight in the weed. The second fish then decided to have a look but he was even more positive in his dislike, turned and almost bolted downstream never to return. I spent another half-hour running the bait close to the weed where the first barbel was hiding but he was having none of it and eventually I decided I was flogging a dead horse and moved on. I came back an hour later but could not see signs of any barbel.
There were several differences between the free offerings that they lapped up with no fear and the hookbaits, these are:

The hook,
The line,
The lead
The fact that the bait may not have been moving as naturally as the free offerings

I am confident that they couldn’t detect the hook - they did not get close enough.

The lead could have been a problem, but I doubt it. I was using a small bomb, 1/8 oz or similar, and I am sure they would not be able to tell it from a lump of gravel at that distance – maybe they can detect ions or something given off by the lead substitute, however I have never seen any evidence to substantiate this. I remember using some camouflaged plastic coating (Terry Eustace produced it about ten or twelve years ago) which was meant to both camouflage it and insulate the metal from giving off ions. I used to use two rods (for carp in those days), one with, and one without the plastic coating– I never found it to produce any noticeable difference in catch rates.

The first fish may have thought that the baits movement was not natural. I know they can’t reason to that extent, but I can accept that they have instincts. All animals have them including humans – you know what I mean, you know something is not quite right but you can’t put your finger on it. You do not need an IQ of 100 plus to have that sort of sense. However the reason I discount this was that by the time the second fish had a look, the bait had stopped – you can’t get much more natural than that.

This leaves the line as the most obvious element that they detected and were put off by. I was hidden reasonably well behind a tree all the time I was watching and fishing, and if they had spotted me, then I am sure they wouldn’t have taken the free offerings in the first place. However, the bank I was standing on was about four feet above the water and at such a close distance to the fish, the line must have been coming off the lead at a pretty steep angle. I didn’t suss this at the time, (otherwise I probably would have lowered the rod top to the waters edge at the very least) it was only having a post mortem of the events at the next Regional Meeting that we came to this conclusion. A similar thing happened to some other members of the Region a few years ago. In a moment of inspired desperation, one of them threaded his line through a three foot length of reed growing in the edge, stoppered it so that it was jammed against the lead such that when he cast out, the line within the reed stood straight up from the lead like a ships mast. With the strong flow the whole set up was wobbling wildly, enough to put any self respecting barbel off. The previously shy barbel apparently swam up to the bait and took it straight away. I am sure that the sight of that thin translucent line rising up close to a bait is very off putting to the fish, as they associate it with danger. The thick reed, although it looked strange and out of place, had never presented a danger to them before and so they had no fear of it.

I also wonder whether it is purely a visual association. We assume it is because the fish are more confident after dark and during coloured water. Mono line will vibrate as the water flows past it, you rarely appreciate this during the day with all the background noise but in the quiet of the night I am sure you will have experienced in certain conditions, with a strong flow the line ‘singing’. This will be exaggerated underwater, water having a far greater ability to transmit sound than air, and I wonder whether it is this singing characteristics that barbel also associate with monofilament line. Braid will not vibrate the ‘same’ as mono, it being to some extent porous and the water will not exert the same pressure on the line as it would mono and I wonder if this means the fish are less wary when we use braid as the mainline.

Anyway this incident highlighted my fears that the line was the major cause of putting fish off in many situations. I have been very conscious of the line when it comes off at a steep angle usually fishing in the margins in deep water, e.g. the Lower Severn etc and I always use a very long hooklink and/or a back lead to move the vertical line away from the bait. When fishing in shallower water I will always try to fish with the rod top parallel with the water instead of up in the air feeder style, to reduce the angle of the line. Obviously this is not always practical when the flow is such that you need to keep the amount of line in the water to a minimum.
Anyway back to the Thames. A couple of trips later I found a cracking snaggy, overhanging tree swim with several barbel in. The fish were tight against the near bank, which was a good ten feet above the water, and totally impractical to fish from, however it was a perfect vantage point for watching the fish from. The far bank, although only a few feet from the water and perfectly practical to fish from, was useless for fish spotting as there was no bankside cover whatever. The tactic then was to bait up and observe from the high bank and fish from the far bank after dark. This entailed walking several hundred yards upstream to the bridge and then several hundred yards down to the other side. It certainly kept you fit.

I watched them for a good ten minutes as they stayed just downstream of the snags with several chub and dace, before deciding to put some bait in. I needed to make sure there was some bait in the swim to try and feed off the chub, and ensure the barbel were still actively feeding after dark such that I should get a confident bite as soon as I put my bait in. It was not practical to use a dropper with the overhanging trees, so I decided to hand feed some hemp. I put a couple of very small handfuls in about ten feet upstream of the fish but due to the turbulent flow the bait was spread about too much for my liking. The flow smoothed out as it got closer to the fish so I decided to try to put the bait a little closer to the fish. Big mistake. I put another small handful in about four or five feet above the fish. I was amazed at their reaction, they all bolted, chub included. The chub returned within a minute or so however that was the last I saw of the barbel that trip. I read about baiting over feeding fish in ‘Carp Strikes Back’ when Rod Hutchinson observed that baiting up with boilies or large baits was disastrous, however the fish did not seem to be bothered with particles even as large as peanuts. These barbel obviously hadn't read the same book.

A few trips later, still barbelless, a couple of pleasure anglers were fishing the swim from the opposite bank. One of the guys was fishing a feeder in open water whereas the other was trotting to where the snags were. I stopped and peered over and could see half a dozen barbel in the swim feeding on the maggots they were feeding. I spoke to them and asked whether they had had any luck. “Not a thing” they said and were thinking of moving swims. I could have let them move on but I was new to the water and thought it would be good to give them some information in the hope that they might pass on some local knowledge. “I wouldn’t move if I was you there are about five or six barbel just downstream from where you are trotting” I said biting my tongue. I spent the next fifteen minutes directing him to where to trot his bait to intercept the fish. It worked he hooked a barbel on about the fifth cast. It wasn’t huge but it slipped the hook after about fifteen seconds and bolted downstream spooking the rest of the fish at the same time. “That’s it for half an hour mate” I said to him thinking the fish wouldn’t be back for a while. I was amazed when they returned about thirty seconds later and carried on feeding. I stayed for another half an hour in which time he lost two more and each time the fish spooked but were back again within a minute.

I used to be of the opinion that if I lost a fish in a swim, or caught a couple of fish, that the swim would be useless for a while and I would move swims and not return for at least an hour. This incident changed my opinion somewhat and although I still move swims frequently wherever possible, I am not too uncomfortable to stay and catch from the same swim all day if I am sure fish are still present.

A happy ending to all of this is that I returned to that same swim a few weeks later, managed to bait up without scaring the fish off and fished it after dark. First cast produced a confident bite which resulted in my 10 lb 2 oz Barbel Catchers Club Thames Record. It just goes to show that sometimes it does all go to plan.

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