The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Here's a barbel I caught last night. After resting and releasing, I recasted. Within minutes the cane hopped over and I was into another barbel, a lump. After taking it away from the streamer weeds it surged hard right and my line suddenly went slack and lost the fish.

I examined my line having lost the whole rig, a couple of swan shots, then noticed that the line looked like it had been cut cleanly with siscors. This is the second time it's occurred to me with big barbel. So I'm thinking, could the bigger barbel charge through/on top of a bed of mussles. I have caught a fair few so I know there's a lot of them. Pike isn't in the question as this was a definitely a barbel.

Thoughts please.....

Just seen this wasn't a pike.
I had this exact same problem a couple of years ago and was baffled by it. I put it down to the swan shot pinched on was perhaps weakening the line at that point.

That’s a magnificent fish, congratulations.

Not sure if this helps but ........... my experience with Mussel shells damaging line relates to the best part of 40 years lure fishing reefs and river estuaries for Bass. I am assuming that you are using mono. In my experience mono dragged through a Mussel bed by a big fish looks jagged and frosted, if there is a snap off, it certainly isn’t clean. For the last 15 years I’ve been exclusively using braid, with mono or flouro leader. If the leader gets dragged through mussels or reef, it takes on the same appearance.

With both the old 4 strand, and newer 8 strand, braid I tend to go for abrasion resistant ones. As these can be obtained in both floating and sinking versions, you could try these for trotting, free-lining and ledgering if you are concerned.

The downside with braid is that I would still only recommend top end Japanese 8 strand, which costs an arm and a leg! Others will disagree but I really don’t rate the ones from UK and North American tackle companies. Sunline is my personal favourite.

Phil

It could have been a bite off. I've been 'bitten' off on the Wye by barbel before, usually with a large bait. When a barbel picks up something it is totally confident in, it will often swallow it and won't necessarily move far to give you a bite. Even if it does move it can still get the bait into the throat and beyond the pharyngeal teeth quickly. If you don't think their teeth are capable of biting through mono then check out the picture of a set of barbel pharyngeal teeth found by my son on the bank just the other day.

Either way a braided leader is as Ducket says, far better for abrasion resistance and generally gives a better bait presentation.

This is really interesting, Dave.

Thanks for sharing Dave, that’s one impressive set of gnashers!

Phil

Thank you for all your replies, very Intresting reading, great photo Dave.