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One thing you have to remember is that barbel aren't small fish, up to 3 feet long, so unless you're going really long 6ft-9ft, the likely hood is that it will spot or terminal tackle, also barbel don't just approach your baited area from directly downstream of it, snatch a few freebies, then go back the way they came, they will approach from upstream, downstream and from the sides, they will pass over your bait, drift back downstream and have a good mooch around, they will most likely have passed by your bait several times before you even get a twitch but as has been mentioned if they are feeding confidently then they won't give a dam if your sat there in the swim with them. The most obvious parts of your tackle are the shiny bits, like swivels, which should be covered with silicone tube and your mainline coming down from the rod. In sunny conditions light will hit your mono or fluro above the water and transmit light down it under the surface, illuminating it almost like a fibre optic cable, there are a number of ways of getting round this problem, don't point the rod high in the air, keep it low to the water, use a back lead or use some matt finish rig tubing brown or green colour. Hooklink length and material is a personal thing, it comes purely down to preference and confidence, personally I use brown coated braid about 10"-12" blends in beautifully with the bottom of the tees and is robust enough to take the knocks In winter or if I'm fishing for really difficult fish I will go to a bolt rig with 6"-3" and all of the above unless the water is coloured, in which case I will ditch the backlead, a short hooklink combined with a bolt rig is far more efficient at self hooking, meaning if a fish picks up your bait you stand a much better chance of it hooking itself, but it's only something that should be used when it's hard, otherwise the fish will wise up to it, so don't play your best hand straight away, keep them guessing. Like Colin says experiment especially if your using the feeder with an aggresive feeding approach sometimes the fish will back off the feeder so longer will pick up fish, sometimes they will attack the feeder so then shorten up.