In Search of Monster Chub: Part Seven.

 Fishing is seldom a catwalk of fashion and style but there is something about marching wader clad around town and along the river, the distant looks of almost complete disapproval entwined with the why would you wear that?, that answer is easy though....without them my last two days of angling (Thursday & Friday ) would have resulted in a complete disaster.

 The need to remain completely flexible when fishing in my opinion is very important, had I not donned my chest-high's it would have been a very slow bit of fishing and knowing the Stour during the winter it's never easy and you need to give yourself every chance to catch what could be a monster, that next trot or lob out with a boilie could provide a 7lb plus fish and maybe even an "eight pounder" in some of the places I frequent of late, under no illusions that the task I set myself at the beginning of the season would have been testing and I am finding it out first hand.

 Trotting maggots by day and static boilie by dusk for that all important knock of the tip or the subtle slip of the float was all I waited for. With the conditions looking good I felt very confident that the Chub would feed.......by midday only the Dace were interested as in my first swim I bagged a healthy 7lb 3oz of the silver darts in just over 2hours. Not my intended target but it was good fun and even though a thickset Pike of maybe 16-17lbs sat just off the shoal the silvers never stopped feeding, after the two hours I had assumed no Chub were present and it was time to move on.

 I moved to another run I earmarked in the summer which seemed to hold good Chub all summer and autumn, so with that knowledge I flicked maggots into the crease as I stood in the middle of the river so I could fish the far side tree line as I believed they would be close by. The next 3 hours were tough on me as I worked tirelessly to bank a fish and contrived to hook and lose two Chub, both around the 4lb mark and came agonisingly close to slipping my largest Stour Roach yet, not quite 2lb but was certainly getting there when the hook pulled just half a rod length from the net, gutted for sure and things were hard going.

 My luck did come in later on in the session as I struck into a solid fish in the main flow as I had no joy on the far bank crease and on a size 18 hook I needed to play it cautiously as the chances of catching were getting slimmer and slimmer. The frame of a decent Chub broke the surface as I angled it through the remaining stems of onion reed towards the net, as it cruised into the net I breathed a sigh of relief, it had been that kind of day!

5lb 2oz, turned out to be my best over the two days.

 After that excitement of a 5lb+ Chub on the board the rest of the day flashed by without a peep, it was to the pub for drinks and curry. Friday, another days fishing, cue the excitement again......oooops we managed to oversleep, again and missed sunrise by an hour. Must stop doing that as its writing off nearly 15% of the daylight angling time. Nevertheless we got out on the bank and Brian's blank day on the Thursday was tough going, so he decided that a days roving for Pike was in order, it didn't take long to stop the rot!. However I continued to struggle but one of the most unlikeliest of lye produced what turned out to be my only Chub of the day again, smaller than yesterday's fish but equally as appreciated as everyone else we spoke to had blanked!. Lucky me eh.

Absolutely immaculate.

 Dusk came and went with very little to shout about, one sharp bang on the tip was the only enquiry I had after 1pm. Hard going indeed.