THE BARBEL 

 From Walton to the present day angling writers who refer to barbel 

 nearly all mention that a hooked barbel not only fights with vigour, but 

 also tries to cut your line with his back fin or by striking at it with his tail. 

 The first ray of the back fin is notched, and doubtless many a gut line 

 has been cut by being drawn across it in the turnings and twistings of 

 the fish, but that he deliberately attempts to use fin or tail in the way 

 described is, I think, open to doubt. For a barbel the best bait is undoubt- 

 edly a worm, fished on a single round bend hook an inch long in the 

 shank and three-eighths of an inch across from point to shank, and it 

 is a good plan to have a bit of bristle whipped to the end of the shank, 

 it not only helps to hold the worm up on the hook, but also helps to get 

 the point engaged in the thick lip of the fish, when he attempts to strip 

 the worm off, as he often does; in fact, when barbel fishing — ^ledgering 

 from a punt in the Thames at a weir or in some "deep " — ^I have often 

 been astounded at the way a barbel will give a sudden tug at your line 

 and strip the worm right off with impunity, even when the medium sized 

 lob is threaded on the hook from end to end. Although I have never done 

 so, I have sometimes thought of putting a bit of strong elastic cord between 

 two loops on the gut — so that the fish would have to stretch the elastic 

 in his sudden pull. An old friend, the late Dr John Brunton, told me thirty 

 years ago that he had often tried this dodge with success when grayling 

 fishing with the fiy on the Itchen. With a fine silk reel line and a yard of 

 fine round stained gut, a ledger bullet of half inch diameter or rather 

 less — ^unless the stream is very strong — hammered so as to have two 

 flat sides, is all you need to enable you to pitch out the bait, and anchor 

 it in the spot you wish to fish. As usually made, this bullet is threaded 

 on to a bit of stouter gut some six inches long with a shot at each end 

 with loops for attaching it to the gut line and the fourteen or sixteen inches 

 of gut attached to the hook. The idea is that, having cast out, you wind in 

 line until taut, when the bullet will rest against the lower of the two shot, 

 thus allowing the barbel a free pull through the bullet. When sea angling 

 at Scarborough last summer I was fishing for billet or coal fish near a 

 well-known local angler, Mr Sadler, who caught more fish than any of us; 

 he appeared to be using a long, flat, coffin-shape ledger lead. I presumed 

 that the line was free to run through it as in our ordinary Thames ledger 

 and asked him if that was the case. He then showed me his tackle, and 

 said he had long ago given up using the running lead — ^i.e., one which 

 you can move up and down on the line — as he found that the fixed lead was 

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