The Coarse Fishing Guide

Latin name Barbus barbus

The barbel is a long bodied fish with a prominent snout flanked on each side by two barbels.

Generally a shoal fish, but some rivers contain small groups of very large specimens.

Whilst Barbel have been present in British waters for a considerable time, their colonisation of some rivers systems, notably the River Severn system is quite recent, following stocking. In the 1970’s Barbel became the dominant species in some parts of the River Severn, and large bags of fish around 2lb were common. Since then, the Barbel has spread throughout the system, and very large specimens can be caught in the River Teme and Warwickshire Avon, as well as their more traditional locations such as the Hampshire Avon and Dorset Stour.

Baits

A favourite bait for Barbel is luncheon meat cut into cubes, but more recently pellets and boilies have become popular for the larger specimens. Feeding the swim with boiled hempseed and then fishing a larger bait over the top is a popular method, the hempseed both attracting the barbel into the swim, and keeping them there.

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Years ago, the tactics for barbel were quite different and many old angling books describe fishing for barbel in ‘The Grand Style’. This involved obtaining very large quantities of worms and paying for them to be introduced into a chosen swim for several days before fishing.

Tactics

Barbel are usually caught by legering tactics. As Barbel  are perfectly adapted to living in very fast water, it is sometimes necessary to use very heavy weights to present a bait to them. In the faster reaches of the River Severn, a heavy swimfeeder will get both the bait and some attractor feed to the fish. Frequent casting is required to get a good quantity of loosef eed into the swim in the heavy current.

In calmer swims, such as are found on the River Teme, a bed of feed such as hempseed can be laid down, and a larger bait fished over the top.

A similar stalking approach to that employed for chub can  also be a successful method on smaller rivers that are known to hold Barbel.