Barbel love pellets, there can be no doubting that, but they must see thousands of them every season. The ones on hooks almost always presented the same way – one pellet banded or hair rigged.

The Snake

When trying to catch fish that see anglers baits nearly every day it can do no harm to make your baits look a little different to everyone else's.

People have used clusters of small pellets, superglued to the hook or to multiple hairs, but that's a bit fiddly for me. This season I have been playing around with an alternative presentation on my second rod – the one not fishing a 16mm Monster Crab and Mussel Tuff 1!

Drilled pellets were a revelation for me last season, and Sonubaits' handy tubs of Pellet Os are really convenient. My first step was to thread three 8mm halibut Pellet Os on an existing hair rig. This scored straight away. So then I tried four on a lengthened hair, and finally five Pellet Os. This reminded me of threading wooden cotton reels onto a piece of string as a child and dragging them around the house. I was easily amused then - and still am! Hence the 'snake' was named.

I like to use a hook that is just about as wide as the pellets with this rig – a size 8 seems to be about right with 8mm pellets. I imagine the fish sucking the bait in like a piece of spaghetti and the smallish hook slips in neatly behind it.

At first glance it looks an improbable set up, and one doomed to give false bites and failed hook-ups, but it doesn't. At least not from barbel. Chub will steal the odd pellet from the hair once they have softened up, so check the bait after a missed chub bite, but barbel hoover them straight up.

Fishing crab flavour Pellet O snakes over two recent evening sessions totalling eight and a half hours accounted for eleven out of seventeen fish, including the biggest of ten pounds ten ounces. Don't be scared of snakes, barbel aren't!

The Snake Catches