BARBEL AND BREAM. 301 



of Hurley Weir, between Marlow and Medmenham, are two of 

 the best swims for heavy barbel that I know of, and both are 

 so deep that even with a heavy ledger-lead the difficulty is to 

 get the bait to the bottom or keep it down when it has been got 

 there. In this latter pool there are, I am sure, some barbel of 

 leviathan dimensions, and I was once hooked in one which I 

 played for three-quarters of an hour without ever seeing the tip 

 of his tail. The same thing happened at the same place to 

 a well-known Thames fisherman, except that in this case, I 

 believe, the time fruitlessly spent in the struggle approached 

 nearly to an hour and a quarter. In fact, the moment the 

 barbel is hooked he goes straight down to, or rather, perhaps 

 more correctly speaking, 'clings' close to the bottom, burrowing 

 head downwards with all his force ; and this particular method 

 of fighting makes him, when hooked, an obstinate and sluggish 

 rather than a lively fish. 



His food consists principally of slugs, worms, grubs, and 

 perhaps occasionally of small fish : and in order to procure 

 these he turns up the gravel and loose stones with his nose in 

 very much the same manner that a pig furrows a field with its 

 snout. The baits for the fish are lob-worms (whole or the tail 

 end), gentles, greaves, cheese, caddis-worms, and many others ; 

 but of these the first two are, in my opinion, much the best. 

 Three styles of fishing are employed in barbel-fishing, or 

 ' barbelling,' as it is called on the Thames, one of which is 

 peculiar to the barbel. These are ordinary float-fishing, 

 Nottingham fishing, and leger fishing, which is the speciality 

 of the art, and was, until late years, almost wholly confined to 

 the Thames and its habitues. A good chapter on the subject 

 of Nottingham fishing for barbel will be found in Baily's 

 'Angler's Instructor,' p. 43. 



The mode of Nottingham fishing, so far as the float and 

 tackle are concerned, has been already described at p. 215. In 

 adapting it to barbel a light bamboo rod with small stiff rings, 

 so as to let the line run freely, and a thoroughly strong (though 

 by no means coarse) gut line are the principal addenda. For 



