In Search of a Personal Best Chub. (Part One)

 It's been quite a few years now since I experienced a special moment on the Chub front, I have had red letter days on a few occasions, the stand out one of course for me was a short session on the Thames which was almost 5 years ago to the day when I managed to catch a brace of 6lb Chub (6.10 & 6.4) on bread link-ledgered over a large bed of liquidized bread, I remember landing the first and was in disbelief by the sheer size of it and not twenty minutes later I hooked and landed the second six, what a day that was and the brace shot was amazing. A few months down the line my computer crashed and it corrupted the HDD and I lost absolutely everything including the photo's of my 2.15 Roach which was also caught on the Thames.

 That was a very painful scenario but over time you realize that the photo's can be erased but you will always remember the catches and I do remember them like they were yesterday and still very fresh in the memory, so since that shitty incident I back everything up on a secondary HDD to prevent a total catastrophe again. It has been quite a long time since I have had what I regard as a Chub red letter day and these don't seem to come by too often. So on to the fishing and with about four hours to utilize I decided on heading out for Roach seeing as I am in a self confessed purple patch but I quickly found out the condition's were not favorable and the wind was absolutely atrocious in the swims I wanted to fish, so I quickly bailed out on that idea and headed on up around a mile or so to Chub grounds where the wind wasn't so keen.

 At 20mph or so at times things were still far from easy but the sight of a bent rod very early on, in fact the second trot at around 25 yrds soon made it all look a little brighter, the float buried itself very confidently which was a good sign they were feeding, for Chub standards it was a very strong fight on the pin and gave a great account of itself in the turbulent water between myself and the shoal, a large set of lips broke the surface and it was clearly a good fish and it didn't look far off 6lbs, what a start I thought but then I quickly descended into a panic as I realized I let my net up by the keepnet another ten yards upstream so I ended up guiding it through the snaggy inside edge to my starting point, thankfully the hook-hold was solid, trying to lift it up with one hand was never going to happen as the girth was simply too much for my decent sized mits, the Avon's were pulled straight out of the bag and put a number to a beautiful looking winter Chub.

Lovely rubber lips at 5lb 12oz.

  Not bad for a first fish from the swim, very nice indeed and it didn't take long either for another fish to show up and put another great fight up, a far side submerged snag did cause a couple of heart in mouth moments as the line went solid but quickly came free, a short fight from there resulted in yet another Chub that looked comfortably over 5lb!, during casts I was cursing something rotten but by the end of the trot I was happy as a pig in sh*t, I was hoping it would continue as the second Chub weighed 5lb 9oz and what do you know, the next four trots resulted in another two fish of 4lb 14oz & 4lb 10oz.

Chunky old chevin.

 I had found a good stamp of fish and was hoping that a six or a seven was in amongst this shoal somewhere and that I may be lucky enough to catch one, the wind whipped up really strong and changed direction slightly which did not help me at all as the line now kept going around the pin and got to a point where I could only cast once the wind died down enough for me to present a bait, this meant I could only cast once every four or five minutes which was bloody stupid but simply couldn't cast across the river to the holding spot where the shoal was and when I did make it the wind would put a wicked bow in the line and drag it into the inside edge which was no good for me.

 The wind after a little while did allow some more fishing and whilst I wasn't fishing I was introducing caster and maggot into the swim to stimulate the remaining Chub in the shoal to continue to feed and run a generous flake of bread through and the next two trots through bought another two Chub one of which was another five-pounder at 5.04 with the other around 3lbs, by the time I had finished nine Chub came to the net in total which was fantastic fishing, a six didn't show but I'm sure they reside here, somewhere. I photographed the largest three of the bag and then released them all fighting fit and hopefully coax that grandmother of their's that I'm interested in meeting her soonish...

What a pair Chevin's, 

Another good Chub gives up.

 It was a very tough day's fishing, the condition's made proceeding's very awkward but this will certainly be classed as a red-letter-day, I've never done three 5lb Chub in one sitting so that was to be up there with the best of my Chub catches, question is will I get a bigger one this season?, I certainly hope so. Until then tight lines and be lucky.