Last weekend I finally got the chance to do a decent amount of fishing, a whole day has been hard to come by of late and armed with a loaf of bread and some maggots I made the most of my time.
After weeks of heavy rain it was nice and settled, which did bring its own challenges but with some knowhow chub are willing beasts. The river was very low and very clear, not terrible conditions for chub if you can find them. I knew where they would be held up but catching them was proving to be a proper challenge, my first half an hour proved completely baron, I turned my attentions to my approach and stepped down my hooklength from 6lb flourocarbon to 3.3lb, dropping the float and hook size too.
Within three trots the float slipped under and I was latched into a hard fighting chub which put up a good account of itself. Once in the net I started to ball up tiny bits of white crumb to keep the fish occupied, on the scales this one went 5lb 1oz, not a bad start at all! Once the keepnet was erected I got to fishing the swim a little harder and the bites came more readily, infact my next 20 or so trots after making that seemingly enormous changeup twelve chub came to the net and lost another two! I could not quite believe how tightly packed they were, but once they were confidently feeding they were hanging themselves.
Amazingly still once the swim slowly died off as the fish wised up and a couple more came to the net the first fish was the best with most in the 4lb bracket, given that number of fish I was hoping there would be at two to four 5's or maybe even a 6+ amongst them but it wasn't to be, just glad to get a bend in the rod.
After exhausting that swim I went for a walk downstream around half a mile to another run that looked good for trotting and once again it took a good twenty mins or so to get a bite which resulted in a chub, that was it for that spot and a few more moves resulted in nothing.
With the sun dropping by this point I went back to the swim I had the single Chub from and opted to fish maggots instead of bread and fed the swim consistently and within my first five trots the float darted under and was met with some serious resistance, the kind of power chub simply can not generate, so it could only be a barbel or a rare carp! five minutes or so passed without seeing the culprit had me wondering if I was actually going to see it! Then a couple of minutes later, out of the depths a barbel appeared!
It really was turning into a great day on the float but nothing big, to be honest it was nice just to get out and do some fishing.
