Carp and barbel are the kinds of fish whose diet is often described as “catholic” which is probably a word now out of favour, presumably because it might be an exercise in advanced silliness to compare their “catholic” diet with those of other fish which could, presumably be described as “muslim”, “presbyterian”, “hindu”, or “buddhist.”

What we really want to say is that carp and barbel (among many other species) are omnivorous which is just another way of saying they like a bit of this and a bit of that. I have had both carp and barbel take streamers and my friend Johan took a nice carp on some rubber monstrosity he was using to impersonate crayfish while he was fishing for black bass. The thing looked like it was a scaled down monster from a 1970’s horror movie but the carp wolfed it down without a second thought. It wasn´t scared, not even a bit.

Both carp and barbel have pharyngeal teeth in their throats and these can make short work of crunching up crayfish and other hard-shelled critters but even so most of the stuff they eat is pretty small and squishy and often they will process food they do not even see, having taken in a mouthful of weed or sediment and sifted out any components of value to them.

I remember a few years back seeing the Mediterranean barbel feeding on silkweed. This is very fine plant material and is packed with tiny invertebrates. The barbel would feed on the silkweed and vent the weed after its journey through the alimentary canal but now minus the various little critters that were in it to begin with.

So if you want to catch a “catholic” (God forgive me!) what fly should you use? I was faced with this conundrum on the Ebro. The fish were generally quite large so small flies and light tippets were out. A few fish were out in the open channels and could be seen in the clear water but most of them were floundering around in the weeds, slurping away.

In Enniscrone in Ireland they have these traditional seaweed baths where you can lie in a bathtub of hot seawater which has a couple of large bucketfuls of kelp thrown in. They say that the iodine released from the kelp does wonders for rheumatism and arthritis. Catriona and I gave it a whirl years ago. You lie there in a great big bath and slosh around in all this bladderwrack. When you come out you feel many years younger than you did when you went in.

Where the Ebro river empties into the Embalse most of the carp and barbel are pretty much enjoying what appears to be a round the clock seaweed bath experience. No rheumatism and arthritis for them!

So how do you catch them? And what fly should you use?

As mentioned before, little flies were out, but so too were many “conventional” carp patterns which normally incorporate some weight. Why? Because the carp and barbel are very easily spooked. You can get away with a weighted fly if you can cast it far enough from the fish and then drag and drop it so that it arrives in front of the fish. This is all well and good in theory if you have enough space but in a weedy spot like mine the plop of the fly will scare the fish if it lands too close. If it lands far enough away not to spook the fish you will almost always get it snagged up in the foliage as you try to manoeuvre it towards the fish.

The best compromise was a kind of unweighted nymph which would not scare the hell out of the fish if it lands nearby and that would also be a slow sinker so that it might be intercepted in the water column if it was not picked up from the floor.

This kind of fishing is very hit and miss and, to be honest, there are many more misses than hits! But this pattern of fly worked pretty well, all things considered. The fish I succeeded in catching were not the iodine-infused cyprinids luxuriating in their seaweed baths but those that were cruising around the margins of the weed beds or feeding in the shallows on the very edge of the river.

The ones who were languishing in their densely weedy hideaways were enjoying life to the full. It must be something like lying under a duvet with a family sized packet of crisps. I imagine they were completely untroubled by the stresses of life and I was one less thing to worry about.

There is not much to these things. The fly on the top survived being dragged through a tonne of weeds. It has lost its youthful veneer. I tried to add a modest bit of sparkle to these things in the hope they might catch the attention of the fish.
This barbel took the fly mid-water as it was swimming on the far side of a weed bed. Movements of its mouth suggested that it had ingested the fly and when I tightened up it went screaming off across the river!
There are fish in the shallow channels between the weed beds and right up against the margins where there is sufficient depth.
I saw this fish swim behind some weeds and cast the nymph in its path. I lifted at the time I thought their paths should cross and lifted the fish up. There was the fish with my nymph in its mouth. I don’t know which of us was the more surprised!
This beautiful fish was feeding in the shallows in water that barely covered it.