Weds 1st February, day two on the D.Stour and H.Avon, and three 6lb chub

The night was not as cold as I expected. I woke to -0.5c and clear skies. Well I woke at 6.45am then the next thing it was 7.15am and time to see Martine for some maggots. Later after a new batch of 6 pints I was off down to the Stour again. My thoughts were to fish the Stour in the morning and then the Avon later on my way home.

Now I was thinking of fishing where Mike was fishing the previous day. He originally didn’t take my advice and fished with cheese paste for 2 hours for a blank. Then he changed to float fish maggot after he saw me catch 4 chub quickly. He lost two fish and landed two others which were smaller in an hour so the chub must be there in numbers.

So I made my way down to the swim later than planned. Again whilst tackling up I fed the swim ready to fish. The wind was supposed to increase during the day and that meant a northeast wind would make things difficult, however for now it was very light.

I’ll let the video tell the story for now.

The temperature was -0.5c first thing in the morning  and -3c the morning before.

So I caught 10 chub from that swim in a little over 2hrs. The other line that I fed didn’t produce. You need to think that 10 fish that’s what I caught from the swim might not leave too many others, it’s not like they are stacked 10 deep in the swim.

So I was pleased that I decided to move to the H.Avon.

It doesn’t take long to get to the stretch I fish on the Avon. It was progressively getting windier and colder too.

It was getting too windy to fish properly and only the occasional trot presented the bait well. The wind blew incessantly downstream taking the line with it causing the float to move faster than the current. It was one of those perfect trot through that produced the big chub. I caught one other chub of about 8oz, one for the future.

8oz chub

I fished a few more swims however the wind was so bad and eventually it beat me up. For a long time I had been trying to catch a 6lb chub from both the Avon and the Stour in the same day. Now I’ve achieved this the only thing that I would want is a 7lber from the H.Avon, it will come but perhaps not this year.

The temperature dropped as the sun began to set and with the wind chill factor it was time to head off home.

6lbs D.Stour chub