In Search of Monster Chub: Part Three.

 It has been a fairly quiet time for me of late on the fishing front, with a culmination of moving into a new house, alot of work currently on and spending a little more time with the Mrs time to head out on the banks has been very limited indeed. But when a gap the size of a day comes up then a road trip was immediately called upon, destination was of course, the mighty Stour.

 Usually for long distance trips I'm up before the sun, this time however I didn't fancy hitting the tarmac at 430am so I opted for a more leisurely pace and left home around 7am. On the river just after 9am it was time to find some fish, I initially started on the Avon stalking runs in the weed for the camouflaged Barbel and Chub but no matter how hard I looked the fish were nowhere to be seen, it didn't take long to head over to the Stour and I had a couple of sections that I fancied.

 Great thing about this river is it is big and lots of places to hide, but I know where some hide so it was a case of trudging to said area, at first I didn't fancy fishing straightaway as I wanted to build up their confidence. twenty minutes or so had passed when I started to see big sets of white lips just downstream, it was time to get going and the bait didn't even get to the bottom! the rod lurched over and I was in, the fight was half decent but I was more worried about the landing net up the bank and just out of reach, with my rather long reach I just managed to grab the end of the pole and drag it down the bank, luckily this Chub didn't fight very hard and it looked a good fish, once it slipped into the net and started to hoist up the bank it clearly was a weighty fish, once on the nice wet grass I could see it was a big Chub. It didn't disappoint either as she registered 6lb 1oz and a season's best.

Howazat! That's none too shabby.

 I was very chuffed by that Chub and for a summer fish it was pretty big, the ultimate target is a 7lber but 6's aren't to be shied away from, good fish and just the sort of fish I'm happy to travel 103miles each way for. The fishing wasn't easy after that as they became very aware of my presence so it was time to leave them alone for another time, I did try a good few swims but fish were proving difficult to catch, the Chub were committing but I could not connect to them which proved very annoying, this set of circumstances continued throughout the day and I struggled to focus after the constant misses earlier in the day. As dusk came I was in position and baited up but I could only sit and watch a pair of Otter's chasing a mid-double figure Pike around my swim which certainly wouldn't do the Chub fishing any good. Over and out for another day.