Barbel "protecting" its territory?
Had a fun day on the water today, initially nymphing for SM yellows, then after spotting some barbel activity below a weir, switched to a #6 black wooly bugger and the fun was on!
I saw some barbel mouths popping up in a row just below a slow weir, gulping up the fry jumping for the wall and put the wooly on top of the wall to let it wash down towards the feeding barbel.
I was standing about 6-7m from the wall just on the edge of a deep 2m+ pool between me & the wall. In this pool was a single, HUGE, maybe 10-15kg barbel gulping up mouthfuls of fry.
I hooked one of the smaller barbel at the wall and as it entered the pool this monster started attacking it. After a tug-of-war, the smaller barbel being the rope, I won the battle (after a dunking) ending up with a 1.5kg barbel with a shredded tail.
On the second hookup, the same thing happened, but this time the hooked barbel wasn't as small and the "pool monster" just kept on bashing it with the tail and head.
Judging from this agressive behaviour, it seemed that the big one was protecting its feeding pool from intruders.
Any barbel pro's seen this type of behaviour before?
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Originally Posted by NCBass
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