Terry ‘Theo’ Theobald enjoyed a great days fishing on the River Wye recently targeting the shoals notoriously hard fighting barbel.

During the morning session, Theo managed to land several hard fighting barbel to just over the 8lb mark. Using a simple running leger set up Theo filled his cage feeders with a mixture of small pellet and plugged either end with a fishmeal groundbait. As the river was quite low and relatively clear, Theo used long fluorocarbon hooklinks and size 14 hooks to help fool the wary barbel into taking his 8mm pellet hookbait.

“I caught all of the barbel on my new Martin Bowler Specialist 1.75 barbel rods, that I must say are fantastic,” he added. They have a powerful semi-through action and are a great all-round barbel rod perfectly capable of landing fish well over double figures, in a variety of situations and conditions”.