In the early 1980s I first stumbled over problems when fishing heavily fished waters with a feeder. The “happy days” of the 60s and 70s when barbel and chub would surge onto the gravel to investigate the “dinner bell” crash of a swim feeder stuffed with maggots seemed to be waning on these types of fisheries.
When I started barbel fishing seriously in the very early 70s, following a few successful debilitating seasons of trotting where maggot and luncheon meat were the standard baits, I started to fish more “bum on seat ” ledgering methods. Maggot and meat remained for a while the standard approach although if your bank balance allowed, casters could be added, though of course it was far cheaper (though much more time consuming) to turn them yourself! Regional variations existed where cheese paste or sausages might appear in your bait bag but usually maggots and meat were the standard. In the late 70s/ early 80s carp fishing had its first major impact on barbel fishing when sweet corn became a mainstay for many of us. This easy to use and readily available bait was usually fished by some of us in conjunction with hemp & tares with the mix being delivered to the riverbed by bait dropper. If you were addicted to feeders ( I wasn’t preferring a simple bomb rig) some would drill out feeder holes so that the grains could wash out in the flow. These grain or particle baits were, for me any way, a very important component of early, mid and late summer fishing. In fact I became ridiculously experimental and for a while became very keen on seeing just how many “off the supermarket shelf” types of bait I could catch on. Sweet corn’s early effectiveness began by festooning 4 / 5 grains on a no 6 or 8 hook for a season or two before eventually, on these heavily fished waters, I was using a single grain stopped by a single tare on a hair rig to a no 12 hook! My friends and I played with not only dyeing peanuts soaked in hemp water with cochineal, and then cooked to the consistency of a grape, but also various pulses , chick peas, maple peas, sultanas , dried raisins and even pearl barley that when cooked in the false cochineal dye, resembled a fat turned caster. All these things worked very well and allowed us to use mixes and variations that seemed to extend “bait life” in the gin clear water of the summer months.
I would qualify this by saying I was only really confident with this approach when water temperatures were above the mid fifties Fahrenheit or about 16/17 deg C . In early autumn, following the first few cold nights, I would find myself drifting back to the maggot and meat approach.
“16lb 15oz of Hampshire Avon’s Gold”
One day, fishing a favoured swim, the river was beginning to show that winter was just over the northern horizon in terms of weed breaking up. However, there was no great change in water colour! With a tub of “grubs”, I had been encouraged by a couple of fish that flashed as they spun on the gravel a couple of rod lengths out in front of me. Although I was fishing water about two metres deep they showed clearly when exhibiting their gold and cream bellies, but were otherwise invisible most of the time. After a couple of hours I noticed the “flashes” had ceased in front of me. I walked downstream peering cautiously through the dying reed mace in front of me and saw a fish flash about 15 feet below the point they had been! Simple I thought! I returned to my swim, picked up the single rod I always used on rivers, only to find a medium sized dace had hung itself on my hook link! I was using a medium feeder with about a 15 inch hook link. Accordingly I recast much lower down the swim and waited for the rod to slam over. It didn’t! After about another hour or so I crept down to the lower spot that my feeder was sitting on hoping to peer through the dead reeds and see another flash or some evidence of feeding barbel. Instead what I did notice was that even further down the swim where the river became shallower, were the shadows of a small group of barbel wafting about between dyeing weed clumps. Clearly for whatever reason barbel were not prepared to get close to my feeder or hookbait and were instead quite happy to lay off downstream waiting for the bait to get to them. I scratched my head for a bit and as only half the day remained, I picked up my other matching rod and reel that was tied to a bait dropper. In those days I had a pair of 12ft glass Bruce & Walker Avon Perfections that I only used as a pair on stillwater for tench, but which I always made up, either as a dropper rod or sometimes a different rig alternative when fishing the river. I took off the dropper and instead tied a standard running “lightish” bomb link with about a 3ft tail as hook links tended to behave themselves more on a bomb rig and not wrap themselves around the feeder. The feeder on the original rod was replaced with a monstrous thing I had in my tackle bag. I drilled the holes out even larger with the end of a pen knife and mindful of the small dace roach and gudgeon that had been either hanging themselves, or crushing the maggots, I removed the hook link. I cast the big ungainly feeder to the original position in the swim and having placed another pair of rod rests alongside the other rod, I cast the bomb rig downstream out into the current to where I judged it would bounce around until settling on the crease in the bait stream tripping down from the feeder above. As the feeder was not actually fishing I would wind in refill and recast every ten minutes like a metronome. After about 15 minutes I retrieved the bomb rod to see if the maggots were crushed or if I had a gudgeon or dace hanging on the end! As I had hoped, they were pristine and untouched with the smaller fish clearly gathering in a cloud around the feeder. Perfect!
All that remains is to say that after a short wait I had the first of three barbel before I eventually packed up as the daylight slipped over the western horizon behind me. No after dark fishing in those days! The next trip the following week- end saw me arrive at the river on a mizzle-drizzle kind of day and employing my new repeatedly cast hook-less feeder and light bomb rig I took seven or eight barbel including a scraper double of 10lb 7oz. I “tested” the theory on several occasions by tying on a hook link to the feeder but only once did I take a barbel on the feeder rig and even that was at the very end of the day when the light was fading. I must stress that this method came into its own in autumn before the Avon or Stour became coloured. I am a great believer in the fact that a method is only as good as conditions allow it to be, so when normal conditions of healthy flow and a tinge of colour arrived I would happily enjoy a more conventional approach. Even today, I still sometimes enjoy “Charbelling” when lighter gear can be used in pursuit of chub and barbel in late autumn or winter, when weed has cleared from the river. I do not claim responsibility for being the first to use two rods on a river. At this time I was however, almost alone in the use of two rods on the fisheries that I frequented, although it is fairly standard practise today. It did inevitably attract some flack with accusations of introducing carp style methods or even the hook-less feeder being referred to as a “bait engine” – whatever that is! I had heard tales of punt fisherman who dropped drilled baby milk tins stuffed with maggots or worms or even onion bags full of stiff mashed bread, over the back of a punt as they trotted a float below it and I could not see any great difference in the method I was employing. I became very adept when, in the first few seconds after a barbel was hooked, I would hold the rod high letting thumb pressure on the pin to see to things whilst quickly whizzing in the other rod if it became necessary. My landing net was always below me, so when a fish hit the downstream bait I could just drop a few paces.
Lessons were learned however and from then on, where the swim allowed I would mostly fish with two rods, except of course where the swim was a restricted “parrot cage” or other features of the swim made the use of two rods impractical. When yet another phase of carp influenced methods arose in the mid 1990s with the extensive use of pellets and boilies, these tactics gained a new lease of life. Fish populations were becoming less though the average size was increasing. Days when multiple bags of barbel were caught became as rare as rocking horse poo and bites became increasingly infrequent. These days with a tendency to fall about or stumble a bit, I always choose fairly comfortable open swims, not being prepared any more to perch precariously in confined awkward slippery swims or quaking reed beds. The upstream rod is the one I invariably use to put fairly ample pva bags of broken boilies and pellet onto the river bed and is cast far more frequently. Hemp whilst still used tends to lodge in the niches and cracks in the gravel although boilies and broken boilies will often trip slowly through the swim, like those long ago maggots. The downstream rod is invariably cast downstream and left undisturbed for far longer but in the same scent stream, that wafts down from the baited area. On very rare occasions if I want to experiment, I might “search” the swim by casting the downstream rod closer in or further out into the flow or even sometimes whacking the bait a good bit further down the swim! As I say though It is usually left undisturbed for far longer!
The main requirement or limitation using these methods is one of etiquette! One should not in any circumstances fish with a rod in front of you with the other situated miles away from your sitting position. It causes nowhere near as many problems as people think if both rods are sited close together within reach no matter how far apart the baits are!
” Severals stretch, caught on the down stream rod. 13lb 10oz of the Avon’s finest”
Kevin Grozier
Ringwood. 23/11/2022