Wrong Conditions.

 I woke up on Saturday with the view to go out for some specimen Roach and at this time of year they will be starting to feed up in preparation for winter, so I packed a very light tackle bag and some back up bait in case things didn't go to plan......and how glad I am that smelly baits were bought along, I got to the river and it was up a foot or so but had dropped considerably plus it was carrying a lot of colour due to the clay banks being torn away by the heavy rain of late.

 Straight away I knew the Roach would be very difficult to locate and with the heavily coloured water they probably wouldn't feed until it started to fine down, but for over two hours I did try a couple of swims where I thought they might be but I didn't have a touch, I had admitted defeat and I feel no matter how long I spent trying it was never going to happen. A mile and half upstream I knew of a couple areas where decent shoals of Chub congregate and in these "wrong conditions" Chub would be the only fish feeding, so the smelly bait was a block Wensleydale and it came to my rescue.

 First cast under the pin and my 7BB Avon trotter buried itself very confidently, I just love Chub for this reason, a certain blank for my intended target could be reversed into a successful morning's trotting, the take was met with a decent amount of force by Chub standards, the skelly charged upstream and struggled to get the line back on the pin with out any slack but I needn't have worried as it turned out to be well hooked in the top lip, first blood 4lb 12oz, not too shabby at all.

A good Chub nearly ready to surrender,

Base camp set and ready to go.

Got ya!, Chub do fight contrary to most anglers belief.

 For the next two hours the trotting ebbed and flowed as I would catch two in as many casts then nothing for 15 minutes then another brace would become attached and banked, the average size was great at more than 4lb with two over the 5lb barrier and when the swim died down and the remaining Chevin's cottoned on to the imminent threat of being caught - I finished knowing I had done well considering everything, after an exciting two hours of fishing I ended up with 14 Chub for a total bag weight of 51 lbs 2 ozs.

 Here are some photos of my backup piece of fishing, not to bad at all.

The larger fish of the haul between 4.2 & 5.5.

A brace of  "fives", 5lb and 5lb 5oz.

My biggest of the day at 5.5.

My second "five" of the day. 5lb 0oz.