How To Catch Barbel (Catfish) On Artlure In South Africa
Barbel, also called the
Sharptooth Catfish, is one
of the more targeted
Freshwater Fish species in South Africa and slowly
but surely more and more anglers are starting to target them
on fly and
lure. This page will give you some tips and knowledge about how to coax
that Barbel into 'eating' a curlytail or small plastic.
Barbel are naturally aggressive fish and generally feed on anything whether it requires effort in catching it or not... Some anglers often refer to this fish as the "Bruin Marlyn".
A lot of people have started targeting them successfully with topwater
and diving hard plastics, some especially made for targeting Barbel. But
I am going to talk about targeting them on Artlure using curly tails
which are plastic small grub looking lures as can be seen on the left...
You do get better colours and better made curly tails than the ones above but the vibration and commotion caused by the tail movement drives the Barbel wild...
Rigging up a curly tail?
There are two main ways to do this that I use...
The best way is definitely by using a small jighead (Similar to
saltwater dropshot) and by sliding the curly tail on all the way through
to the eye of the jighead. From what I have seen the way you slide the
curly tail onto the jighead does not make too much off a difference,
unlike saltwater dropshot. Please see the two ways I have fished these
curly tails below. The curly tails are about 2.5cm on a 1/8 or 1/16
ounce jighead with white weight and eye to create a contrast of colour,
even though barbel mainly feed on vibrations and feel.
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The second option is to use a normal J hook, or even better a small bass hook and add a split shot about 5cm up the line from the eye of the hook... Attach the curly tail the same way as above...
Fishing Curly Tails
Have found 2 techniques get the Barbels attention, the second one is quite strange... Basically 99% of the time you are looking for Barbel activity...
When the Barbel are tailing or coming up for air the best thing to do
is cast a couple of meters over the fish, let it sink, and slowly bounce
off the bottom with a "twitch, twitch" and then reel up the slack,
generally the slower retrieve works better than a faster retrieve
especially when on the bottom as it gives the Barbel time to pick up the
movement and then attack the curly tail. Once hooked the Barbel do not
give up. They swim for cover and do anything to try shake the lure out
of their mouth.
Now this I found very strange but it works very well... In low light
conditions where the Barbel are very active you throw the curly tail
amongst the active fish and as soon as it hits the water start
retrieving it at a fast pace, keeping it on top of the water as much as
possible. It's as close as a freshwater angler will get to experiencing
that thrill of a gamefish chasing a
popper or plug. The Barbel literally
swarm and smash the curly tail, a lot more fish are lost than hooked or
landed this way as the setting of the hook is a bit more difficult
depending on where the Barbel 'eats' the curly tail.
