Fishing less often is more effective, Tony believes, especially when fishing for barbel. The author owes his success to a more careful preparation of the fishery, than perseverance in sitting by the water.
Barbells are very careful fish. If you want to fish them effectively with a rod, you should worry them as little as possible. What does this mean in practice? Well, one hour of fishing in a well-prepared fishery is always more effective than a whole day of sitting by the water and constantly scaring off all fish in the vicinity. Immediately feeding a bait you spot a fish in the hope of a quick bite only sometimes brings the desired effect. Much more often it results in the fish escaping immediately, actually before we even start the actual fishing. This mainly applies to large and experienced barbel, which become more and more skittish with age. Large fish sometimes take a long time to overcome their suspicions and reappear in the baited area. We must always remember this.
Cooked hemp
How to prepare a good fishery? The best groundbait for barbel is undoubtedly hemp. Boil the hemp seeds in water for a while, until they burst and show white sprouts. I don't know such a river, in which barbel would not react to this wonderful groundbait. That's why I take at least two kilos of cooked hemp for each barbell trip. Given the fact, that barbel is particularly fond of hemp, I am completely calm, that these fish will eventually appear in the place I am attracting to. Always bait with ten full feeders before fishing. I lower them into the river at the tip of the tip. This is dictated by two reasons. First of all, that's why, that it is much easier to observe fish from this close range, provided, however, that we can actually sit quietly by the water. Secondly, this makes feeding a lot easier. Even at night, you can throw the bait ball precisely or lower the feeder into the same place. This is why precise baiting every time is so important, that barbel, as long as they are not scattered, they always forage there, where the most groundbait is at the bottom. With a large "spread" in baiting, the chance of success is much smaller.
Getting used to the bait
When luring with hemp, we also need to add small amounts of bait to them, which we plan to fish on later. Cases are a good bait for barbel, corn and protein mini-balls. There is a rule for this - if we fish during the day, we should use the smallest possible lures. We can only afford large lures at night with very cloudy water in the river. Why?
I know from my own experience, that in clear water, large fish are very wary of large lures, they even avoid them. This applies in particular to breakfast luncheon. Although, under certain conditions, breakfast luncheon cubes are an excellent bait for barbel, in clean water I have watched many times, how big fish in panic ran away from the pieces of luncheon meat lying on the bottom. So we only fish for meat lures then, when fish find food only by their sense of smell, and this only happens at night or in very cloudy water. Despite this, I've already caught a lot of nice barbel on luncheon luncheons, I never lure these fish with large chunks of groundbait. The only exception is large lollipops. They are also an excellent bait. If I plan to fish with them, the half-worms as groundbait have never let me down. Brzany, which will enter the hemp groundbait "carpet" lying on the bottom, they also like to eat other food (bait!), provided, however, that it does not seem unnatural to them. After baiting a few promising places, we start to carefully observe them. This activity requires patience and a lot of self-discipline. Soon after baiting, the first fish should appear in several places and, after breaking the first resistance, start feeding. However, let's not start fishing for any treasures! Let's take a closer look at the fish and try to estimate how many barbel visit a given fishery and how big are the largest individuals. Let's also try to determine, do the fish have a feeding "pattern", do they follow fixed routes when leaving the fishery. All these preparations will help us pass the bait precisely afterwards, and thus increase the chance of hooking a really big fish.