Ade Kiddell- October 2019

This entry was posted on 21st October, 2019

Last time I blogged, I had plenty of fish coming out of the waters and I am glad to say my luck has continued as last week we managed a whopping 177 barbel between four of us and a new P.B. of 10lb 6oz caught by old friend Ray Smith. This was his first double figure barbel which I am very pleased to be could be on hand to net and photo the fish for him, well done Ray.

Ray is not the only one enjoying the bliss of barbel fishing. My granddaughter, Florence is also growing her love for fishing. Florence joined us almost every day with a pole to hand for small fish. Hook, play, land and un-hooking all by herself, I am sure for next year’s trip she will be casting the feeder by herself and hopefully getting even more into fishing with her Grandad.

Whilst barbel are still my number one fish I enjoy catching fish of any species and trying to up my P.B. If you follow my blogs you may have noticed that I mentioned the capture of the Common Nase or often called the Sneep in Europe. We do not have Sneep in the UK, and these fish can be a challenge to catch as they are algae eaters and often ignore many baits thrown to them. However, I have found they have a liking for bread and dead red maggot.

To assist fellow anglers with their use dead maggots, I will lend some advice. Firstly, don't wait until the maggots you want to kill are past their best, in-fact the fresher the better! To prepare your maggots for use remove any old skins as well as any dust they are in, the cleaner they are the better. I then put them in good strong poly bags, usually around a pint to a bag, seal the bag and put them in the freezer. It takes a couple of days to ensure they are dead but when you need them, just take the required amount out of the freezer and thaw them in some water. Once thawed they need to be kept in water or they will go black and become useless.

To give dead maggots an extra boost I add a good squirt of maggot fishmeal liquid flavour to the water I keep them in. The number of fish I have had over the last few weeks means I must be getting something right! Why are they so effective and particular red ones, for me it's simply they look just like a giant bloodworm and we all know how much fish love bloodworms. Once added to the hook and in your swim, dead maggots lay dormant on the bottom, with a big “eat me” sign.

I also found that Sneep often give away their presence as they can be seen flashing against the stones and rocks on the river bed. A lot of anglers mistake a shoal of flashing Sneep, as a shoal of barbel, barbel flash in a very similar way but a good set of Polaroid glasses and it's easy to see the difference. I believe this flashing is a way of dislodging algae that Sneep then eat as it drifts away.

More by luck than judgement I found a large shoal of Sneep just below one of the many weir-pools on the river, I could clearly see them flashing and betraying their presence, now all I had to do was catch them. A simple running rig with a small block-end feeder a strong 16 hook on a tail of about 18 inches was all that I needed, along with a couple of pints of dead red maggots for feed and a mix of live and dead maggots for the hook.

First cast produced a decent Sneep over 2lb and over the next 3 hours I managed a decent net of fish with seventeen Sneep as well as six bream and five barbel to complete a fantastic morning fishing. The best Sneep I landed was over 3lb. Frustratingly I saw bigger and lost a couple of unseen fish in the fast flow but I plan to target sneep over the next few weeks.

With a big Sneep to catch and the alluring barbel starting to put weight on for the winter I have a few targets to reach and some choices to make to hopefully make some progress and beat my PB’s. I will update you next time on my progress.