My good friend Mark Pilley and I arranged to do a session on a small waterway fishing for a multitude of species including chub, dace and roach. We arrived bright and early and as the light started to prevail, it was apparent that the river before me was certainly my kind of waterway - consisting of shallow gravels and some nice deep holes. We waded out and fed steadily for half an hour or so and I was soon running through. The river was ridiculously low and the swim literally had no pace when running through. After running through a few times, the wind started to commence at quite a speed. This made presenting a stickfloat pretty much impossible. On wind breaks, I did manage to present the bait a few times, managing a single chub and Mark later managing a nice chub himself, and a perfect little roach. After this the wind really picked up, therefore we decided to give a more sheltered swim a go which Mark fancied our chances for some chub and dace.
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| When I eventually got my eye in! |
Throughout the morning, I hold my hands up and say I fished absolutely horrendously. I missed several bites and managed to hook the bottom and nearby trees several times, at one point it was amusingly horrendous! We looked from above and saw some nice chub by a tree, close in, and our excitement levels hit the roof for some sport. We waded in upstream and started to feed a steady trickle of maggots to get the fish competitive, one of the most important things in fishing for chub in any form of float fishing. After some undisturbed feeding, we were soon running through. I missed a couple of quicker bites, but when I did manage to hook one of the culprits, it was a nice dace. Mark and I decided to fish this swim on one rod and have a fish each, and on his run through, he was soon into a nice chub. It gave a lovely scrap and after some powerful charges towards the snag, Mark soon got the fish under control and it was in the net. This is where things got a lot more comical, when I managed to bump three chub in a row and even get snagged by a dace to Mark's amusement! After trickling some more maggots in, I was soon into another. As always, on light line, it is great fun taking chub steady and my float rod was beautifully absorbing the lunges. After keeping the fish clear from the snags, it eventually was ready to be netted. It was a nice looking chub with lovely brassy scales. After this, we were eventually set on a straight efficiently landing a chub a chuck each.
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| A Lovely Chub which gave a great scrap! |
Towards the end we did manage some more decent fish, but nothing massive. It was good though to get some nice sport on the stick float, as I have not used this method once this season for chub. Big thanks goes to Mark for an enjoyable day on this lovely little waterway, sharing a good laugh at my expense and being great company! To say the least, I was very amazed by the populous of chub!
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| Nice selection of our little net of Chub |
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| Lovely looking chub going back... |
Tight Lines,
Tom Aldous
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