Zooming In On Barbel And Shad

JACK PERKS- The natural history photographer has filmed all 53 UK freshwater fish species, and this week he looks at barbel and shad.

BARBEL are my second favourite fish, just behind grayling, and as I only live a five-minute walk from the River Trent, I’m constantly reminded of them.

When I worked in Matchman Supplies tackle shop in Nottingham, anglers would talk about barbel, mostly about their fighting capabilities.

To this day I still haven’t caught a Trent barbel. It is on my ever-increasing ‘to-do’ list, but I have filmed them many times.

Although I have barbel on my doorstep, the Trent is a huge river and often too murky to film in, so I turned my attention to the River Teme near Worcester.

This is by no means an easy river to film in, as it’s got some of the strongest flow I’ve ever encountered and is never gin-clear, but what it does have at certain times of year is a huge concentration of barbel.

I enlisted the help of Shaun Nurse, or as I like to think of him ‘the Barbel Whisperer’. He’s spent countless hours by the river just watching the fish, though he is also a professional angling guide.

He showed me the best spots to see them, with lots of gravel beds and bends. The first thing that we came across was some huge chub, gathered under a bridge like U-boats, looking for a snack.

It is really hard not to get sidetracked when I’m out filming, as I nearly always see other species that I’d like to film.

However, there was another species that I was hoping to film today, the twaite shad.

These migratory ‘freshwater herrings’ were once more widespread, but are now found in only a few rivers, the Severn catchment being a stronghold.

We walked along the bank with polarised glasses glued to our faces, looking for a flash of bronze below. A plume of silt started to wash downstream, and we could see at the head of it were four or five barbel that were spawning.