Over the years certain things have changed my fishing, but none more so than the use of a back lead when barbel fishing.

I first started using back leads for barbel back in 1996. I remember fishing one of my favourite swims on the River Great Ouse one night and I was getting lots of line bites. There was clearly a lot of barbel in the swim, and I expected a bite at any moment. As morning broke I could see down into the swim and I could clearly see barbel flashing in the swim, despite not having a bite throughout the night.

At this point I thought, if I was carp fishing I wouldn’t have a tight line running straight through the swim, I would have the line pinned down using lead core or tubing. So I attached a small lead held in place by two Float Stops several feet away from the lead and carefully positioned the rig back into the swim.

The line bites completely stopped, then out of the blue, my rod arched over with the first of many barbel caught that morning from the shoal. So from that point onwards when ever I am fishing on small rivers or close in for barbel, I will incorporate a back lead into my setup.