Des Taylor’s July Angling Tips
At Last the River Season is in Full Flow
We are now a couple of weeks into the river season and those barbel are used to having pellets and boilies of various sizes and flavours thrown at them and will be well and truly on the feed.
My favourite way of fishing for this species is on a straight lead or a feeder using two rods which I will take down to one rod if the hook ups are coming so fast it starts to look very possible I could have two barbel on at one time which is something I want to avoid.
Now what I am going to tell you in the next few sentences is probably my greatest edge in barbel fishing and yet very few anglers will do it.
It’s called “bait and wait” which entails setting no gear up and simply sitting there putting bait in little and often for an hour or so before casting a bait into the swim.
“Bait and Wait”
Note I said little and often NOT putting a few kilos in and then sitting back for an hour because that will achieve very little but if you feed like you are going to feed when actually fishing you will get the fish lined up and ready for capture and very often this method will gain the confidence of the bigger fish and many is the time I have caught a double figured fish first cast when other anglers have struggled to catch such a fish all season! I know when you have been to work all week it’s very hard to sit there for an hour without fishing but believe me it will be worth it in the long run.
I often on my guide days compare my fishing with a painter and decorator that starts painting as soon as he arrives at your house compared to the chap that does a great job but spends the first day preparing the surfaces. That’s the same in fishing and the angler that spends time preparing the swim before trying to catch fish will catch more and bigger, that’s a fact I have proven a thousand times.
Also, a big mistake is to stop feeding when you are getting no takes personally I will keep feeding and sometimes it may be two hours sometimes even longer before those fish turn on the feed but you will rarely turn them on my not feeding at all.
On average I will use in an 8 hours session two to three kilos of soaked pellets and half a kilo of boilies, I soak the pellet overnight so I can make small balls to introduce into the swim upstream of my peg so that it hits the bottom and then and only then breaks up as it passes through my swim where my hook baits and barbel are waiting.
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