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 Dave Tainton |
What do barbel feed on Winter? Aside from Anglers bait. |
Lead | |
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Posts: 88 (14/02/06 11:37) |
Hi,
Might seem an obvious question, but what do Barbel feed on during the winter months? Snails, crustacea? Given the weight gain at the end of the season, there must be a fair bit of food washed down by floods, but what is it? Cheers DT. |
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lesliefisherman |
Re: What do barbel feed on Winter? Aside from Anglers bait. | ||
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Posts: 2713 (14/02/06 11:43) |
hi,worms would be one of them i should think,insects from trees,but if its really cold they wont be feeding at all,or not much.derek.
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DANIEL07881 |
Re: What do barbel feed on Winter? Aside from Anglers bait. | ||
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Posts: 156 (14/02/06 12:11) |
I'd agree with fat lobworms after a flood
 .....i'm sure that i've heard it can be benifical to use natural baits in the Winter months....but can't remember where .....Danny... |
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Paul Boote |
Cased caddis larvae | ||
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Posts: 4487 (14/02/06 12:46) |
I caught a Southern English winter barbel of about 4.5 pounds several years ago that had a "concrete belly" - just like a trout and grayling that has been blitzing cased caddis larvae living under the riverbed stones and gravel. Caddis? A big Signal crayfish? I wondered. Possible. A bellyful of someone's boilies? Nope to the latter: few people could fish the little bit of water I was on, and they were all flyfishers. My first suspicion was proved correct: the barb regurgitated three in-tact caddis cases as I released it.
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RollingPinBoy |
Re: Cased caddis larvae | ||
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Posts: 1740 (14/02/06 13:21) |
It may not necessarily be all food that adds to the weight. I believe they also take on water at the build up to spawning to surround the eggs which also enlarge as they start maturing....Ray
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kevin ci |
Re: Cased caddis larvae | ||
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Posts: 514 (14/02/06 13:34) |
Paul,
have always assumed that on most waters, that Caddis is the bread& butter for most fish like barbel but,in a wild enviroment like a river would think that they would need large quanties to keep body weight up particualy during winter? I Realise during summer that food more plentyful, mayfly larve,small fish etc, but would you say they gourge themselves to build up reserves for the tougher times? I can never quite get my head round why they are at their best weight during late feb/early march, because food is not that plentiful and flows are normaly stronger so they must have to use more energy? any ideas what goes on? well just out to help em get bigger with a bit of decent grub for em!  but also packing up early to win a few brownie points!  Think mrs c-i will do her nut if I push this trip!!  kev just read rays piece,intresting. |
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MarkLatham |
Re: Cased caddis larvae | ||
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Posts: 386 (14/02/06 13:40) |
Insects, Worms, Water Snails, Snails that have fallen into the river, slugs would all be things i would suggest but dont take me up on that!
 Mark |
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RollingPinBoy |
Re: Cased caddis larvae | ||
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Posts: 1740 (14/02/06 14:09) |
Problem down here in Dorset is that we don't seem to get floods like we used to any more that go over the bank and wash the food in, but the fish have got very big..ray
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Paul Boote |
walking on the wild side | ||
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Posts: 4487 (14/02/06 14:50) |
What do you think Mrs and Mrs Barbus did for grub before we came along with our meats, pastes, pellets and boilies?
Aquatic insects HAD to feature heavily - Mayflies (if present in the river), nymphs of the Ephemeroptera (the "Day flies" - of which the large Mayfly is a member -what flyfishers call Medium and Dark Olives etc), and caddis - a MAJOR item of diet for grayling and wild, unfed coarse fish in winter including, I believe, barbel (the latter when "woken up" from their torpor by higher water temperatures). Here are some caseless caddis (very common in running waters) for you: www.alanaecology.com/acat...tera_.html www.danica.com/flytier/do..._dub10.jpg And some photos of the cased ones: www.google.co.uk/images?a...afe=images |
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Paul Boote |
PS | ||
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Posts: 4487 (14/02/06 14:53) |
Caseless caddis come in lots of colours - green, tan, brown, creamy white...
White, you say? A bit like our maggots... |
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DANIEL07881 |
Re: PS | ||
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Posts: 156 (14/02/06 19:47) |
Anybody use them for catching Boris??? Any good??
Danny..... |
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mikevwilson |
Caddis | ||
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Posts: 871 (14/02/06 20:48) |
The big barbel, from memory 16.01, caught by a salmon angler just below Ibsley Bridge was set up and I remember Col.S.Crow telling me it was stuffed full of caddis larvae.
There are a great many varieties of Caddis Flies [Trichoptera] which are commonly seen and can be distinguished by the tent-like way they hold their wings. Their larval stage is quite interesting and the larvae coat their bodies with either stones,sticks or vegetation. Each type having a prefered method. If you collect a few and ease out the larvae you will find it a creamy coloured nymph like creature with a black head. Generally around 3/8ths long and possible to use as bait on small fine hooks. Both the Kennet and the Hants. Avon are literally covered with them as a close look at the bottom will testify. Not so many in the Thames but still there but the Thames seem to have millions of little snails which when collected together look remarkably like hempseed and when crushed between your fingers feel exactly like hemp. In my view Paul is spot on. Mike |
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Tom R |
food | ||
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Posts: 2401 (14/02/06 20:53) |
Don't forget snails.
In the period after a flood all kinds of molluscs snails and mussels get eaten. They are particularly vulnerable because their shells get smashed up when the gravel moves on the bottom. All the best spots on the Severn are wall to wall snail beds. Lee Fletcher first pointed this out to me and since then I've seen plenty of evidence of the process. Tom |
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Paul Boote |
Now, it just so happens that | ||
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Posts: 4487 (14/02/06 21:40) |
I was one of the first Brits to be turned onto caddis (fly) patterns back, by some European fishers (Austrians who also fished in Poland and parts of the old Czechslovakia), in the 1980s, for use for deep-lying, bottom-feeding grayling...
It only required a bit of a mental jump from me several years ago to dare to chuck the same type of flies, tied on stronger hooks, at a few barbel. Hard, hard work, but I have had a few fish. Links to the sort of flies I am talking about by a great Dutch flytyer: www.danica.com/flytier/hk...adhead.htm www.danica.com/flytier/hk...caddis.htm PS - Yes, I have tried hair-rigged cased caddis larvae. Needle in a haystack, needle in a haystack... |
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mikevwilson |
Re: Now, it just so happens that | ||
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Posts: 871 (14/02/06 22:39) |
Hi Paul
Thanks for the links. Superb tying.....must tie some up when the temperature drops again. Mind you they won't be that good. Mike |
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BarbusBob |
Food | ||
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Posts: 117 (15/02/06 16:57) |
Hi all,
What about minnows, bullheads, gudgeon etc. etc., live or dead? Bob |
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Paul Boote |
Definitely | ||
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Posts: 4487 (15/02/06 17:28) |
the bullheads. And Stone loach, too. Both give them the occasional bigger mouthful as they're rooting among the stones for caddis etc, you see! Minnows are more a May / early June thing for barbel, when millions of the little devils (minnows) are doing their stuff in the shallows. I once watched a pair of monstrous (virtually uncatchable during the season, back them) barbs working a huge, long minnow shoal in May, on the Avon, one year. Terrific sight to see a fish of well into middle-double figures knock a good 4-pound interloper chub half out of the water!
Another source of winter grub for barbs is salmon spawn (though don't tell the salmon anglers I told you this, or they'll be going at me on the flyfishing forums again...). I have watched big upper Hants Avon barbel positioned below spawning salmon on their shallow, gravel "redd" spawning beds on a number occasions, almost always during the Christmas holiday. Hoovering up the wasted eggs that didn't make it into the excavated gravel bed like crazy they were. |
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rodenline |
Re: Definitely | ||
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Posts: 627 (15/02/06 22:56) |
Quote: Paul, In the 1960s my grandparents turned their farm into a caravan site. One of the founding members was a very nice Irish gentleman called Pat, (yes I know), anyway I can remember being fascinated watching him tie flies at a small table outside his caravan to try to match the caddis he had collected from the local river Rheu (My grandparents owned about a mile or so of it). He must have been quite good at tying though because he was one of the few visitors who could actually catch the trout in that little river, (us kids had shown him most of the lies though). As kids my cousins and I would wind all the anglers up by walking through the caravans with half a dozen trout strung through the gills on a hazel stick, the only tackle we had was a Woolworths starter kit. If only they had known what Pat knew, that we had in fact tickled them. 
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Paul Boote |
Now, the Irish | ||
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Posts: 4487 (15/02/06 23:37) |
know a thing or two about fishing (and not just about the Caddis, or the Sedge as the English still call it). It's about Right Attitude, I reckon - about instinctively knowing not to turn fishing into politics or into inter-personal rivalry. Some of us, here, are still (or yet to start) learning...
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Dave Tainton |
Re: Now, the Irish | ||
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Posts: 88 (16/02/06 11:48) |
While managing another blank yesterday on the Lower Severn ( something I am getting very good at!), using Boilies and flavoured meat, I started to think about contents within the thread. Wonder if a 10-14mm cork ball, coated with Hemp seed on a hair would work-it would look like a ball of snails???
Or soak the cork ball in some sort of extract, then coat it with Hemp. These are the sort of ramblings which go thru my mind when blanking in what was ideal conditions! Cheers DT. |
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mikevwilson |
Hemp | ||
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Posts: 871 (16/02/06 14:25) |
Hi Dave
Don't use a cork ball because it will rise off the bottom. Try a glass bead on 1/2" hair. Coat the bead with 'Bogey' [with wet fingers] and press in DRY uncooked hemp. Fish on a bed of hemp at short range and don't expect 3' pulls. 3" is more like it until they feel the weight! I suppose you could try superglue....to fiddly for me. Mike |
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