Is there too much emphasis placed upon bait by modern barbel anglers? Tony Miles thinks this may well be the case and advocates some fundamental rules for improving your catches

Over recent seasons, writers on barbel and chub fishing - and I am as guilty as anyone - have perhaps placed far too much emphasis on bait. Most queries I receive on fishing for those two species ask for advice on bait recipes, baiting principles and so on. In fact, I can't remember the last time I was asked a question about watercraft! It is interesting to scroll down the topics on the various Internet angling sites to find further evidence of this. Many anglers bemoan the fact that they have not been able to catch fish on supposedly good baits and therefore the baits must be crap and the claims made for them hype or downright lies. Let me take just one example. A recent topic discussed John Baker's Frost and Flood - a product I know well. If correctly applied, this is an absolutely superb fish catcher, as I know from my own results and the results of friends. However, there appeared a general consensus on the site that the bait was over-hyped. Interestingly, not one message assigned any blame to the angler; the lack of success was, without contradiction, directly attributed to the bait.

Golden rules

So let us put bait into its proper perspective. When I sat with Dick Walker in his hut on the upper Ouse in the summer of 1972, discussing the basic principles of big-fish hunting, he outlined what he called his five golden rules, in order of their importance. These were…

1) First find your fish.

2) Having found them, don't scare them.

3) Fish for them at the right time

4) Fish for them in the right way

5) Choose the right bait.

If we expand on these rules a little; the first obviously relies on observation and, if that is not possible, watercraft. The second is self explanatory, but can include an element of swim preparation to allay suspicion. The third implies knowledge of our quarry, for instance making our concerted efforts for roach and barbel at dusk, bream at night and so on. The fourth also implies knowledge of feeding habits under certain conditions, for instance fishing for tench at dawn laying on with a big bait and switching to the lift float with a small bait as the sun gets higher in the sky. Fifth and last is bait, which assumes minor importance if you've got the first four right!

When I outlined these principles to a group of anglers recently, they jumped on me immediately, figuratively speaking, saying that in my book Elite Barbel I had attributed my success with the big Kickles barbel to a special bait, and therefore I was contradicting myself. However, that is not true. All the anglers concerned had been guilty of the same oversight, by focusing on the bait itself rather than for the reasons for using the bait. In the book, I outlined the major problem with the winter fishing at Kickles, which was location of the fish. In other words, Dick Walker's first golden rule, first find your fish. With so much water to search and so few barbel, dropping on the right swim by conventional tactics was a sheer lottery. Having conducted my special bait experiments at Adams Mill in the summer, where observation of the barbel's response was easy, I knew that my bait would be another weapon in my location armoury, together with painstaking plumbing to find interesting areas to place the bait. When my serious campaign began at Kickles Farm in the early winter of 2000, I knew I had a bait that would attract fish from as much as forty yards away, and this had to improve the odds in my favour enormously. I have said many times that if those barbel had been easy to locate by conventional means, so that I knew exactly where they were, or there had been a much bigger head of fish, I would not have needed my special bait. I would have caught on corn, luncheon meat or whatever. So it wasn't the bait itself that was the key, it was the bait's role in the location process that was vital. It is obvious to me that a lot of anglers have totally missed that point and there seems a common misconception that somehow finding the magic bait will start putting fish on the bank, without having to bother with the onerous job of location. Such a bait does not exist!

Before embarking on a campaign at an apparently uniform stretch, it is worth spending some time plumbing, to see whether any underwater depressions exist. Again, even a small dip in the river bed could create a hot spot, as could an area of gravel in an otherwise muddy bottom. That is exactly how I found the barbel swims that led to the capture of my big barbel from Kickles Farm.

Although you should investigate thoroughly any feature that is present, much of the fishing in the areas of river I have in mind will be a matter of painstaking elimination. With a uniform stretch perhaps hundreds of yards long, there is no way of knowing exactly where the fish will be. You have to find them either by trial and error or by creating artificial hot spots by loose feeding and hoping the fish will come to you. This is where the special baits do have a role, as explained earlier.

Let me close by saying that obviously the bait you use is important, sometimes very important. But far more important, vital even, is location of your quarry. The best bait in the world won't catch a big chub or barbel that's half a mile away!

The full text of this article was originally published in Coarse Angling Today