First Chub of the Winter.

 

 It's now mid-December and I have only just ( on Saturday ) got out for Chub, the conditions have been all wrong and no weather pattern seems to settle in for long enough to make a concerted effort at one particular species, by the weekend just gone I gave up waiting for that settled weather system and just went. An early start with Brian as we aimed to get to the river before sunrise...

 ...An hour later than billed we arrived. I decided to start on the float with my 14ft Acolyte Plus rod on the pin and my 11ft Acolyte feeder rod to chop and change if needed. Fishing towards a deep run along an undercut bank I started to feed little pieces of breadflake and a couple handfuls of mashed bread, once the free-offerings went out I let the swim settle for about 10mins before fishing it, when I did get a baited hook out the float slipped away fairly quickly and a Chub about 3½lbs battled away deep among the remaining weed, a good start.

 The good start got even better as within my first 5 trots I had three Chub, the third being a much better fish, broad and pretty chunky which I thought would go over the five-pound mark and so it was to be, 5lb 3oz on the digitals was a pleasant sight, always know when you have a better Chub on the end, they just get their heads down try to find every snag in the river but the power in the reserves of the 14ft rod allow you to give you all the help you need. 

My winter's benchmark, 5.03

And it behaved itself!

Nice start :) 

 Thirty minutes in the bites began to dry up, the amount time between the half-hearted pulls on the 7BB float got further and further apart. After 3hrs of fishing and a few Chub later I decided to move on, even though I knew more fish were present, they were just cagey. Issue was is the remaining hours spent on the river provided very very little and I really had to scratch around for a bite and an hour after sunset I finally got another Chub on the bank which was only a small one of 2lb or so.

 It was hard, but a good first Chub trip of the winter.