River Wye chubbing

Last week I fished twice on the Bristol Avon this time trotting bread flake on one stretch. The results were very good however the size of the chub didn’t exceed 3lbs. All in all I landed about 15 so very good fun.

I then had another day this time using some cheese paste ledgered. In every swim I fished I caught several chub however once again none of them were over 3lbs there was about the same number caught too. There was sufficient time to fish for 90 minutes after dark. Result not even a tickle from a chub. Very strange as normally they do feed but not today.

The river Wye had been fining down from some floods of 3 weeks ago and with little rain falling the river became lower. Now I’ve been waiting to float fish for the chub there using bread as bait. The reason for using this was that there are many minnows in the river and I just thought they might give me plenty of grief. So Bread it would be a good way to avoid this.

A quick phone call confirmed that the river looked good so I bought a couple of tickets for Monday. Steve a mate had indicated he would like to join me.

So there we were at 6.30am meeting at mine and in just under an hour we were walking the banks in near perfect conditions. Windless cloudy sky’s were about as good as it gets.

The river does still push through at a pace even during the low winter conditions so I was using my 15ft Hardy Marksman rod with 5lb main line on a fixed spool reel. The float was a Drennan 5aaa crystal avon type this would ensure that the float would hold in the strong flow and present the bait just right. The hooklink was 4.12 lbs with a size 8 hook.

For feed I had some liquidised bread plus some mashed bread and of course flake on the hook.

The first swim looked to be perfect, a crease between faster flow and an eddy. I baited the swims as I normally do with maggots while setting up.

The depth was about 5ft and it was the first trot down that saw the float burry under the turbulent surface and the rod take on a very good curve. The chub do pull back some what in the fast current. I neted the fish in the slacker eddy.

A quick check on the scales and at 3.5lbs it was a good start.

The very next trot down the identical thing happened and I was playing a slightly smaller chub of about 2lbs. What a start to the session I was thinking 200lb and even perhaps 300lb bag of fish would be the outcome of the day. Well that might as well been a dream.

For the remainder of the day I tried so hard in deeper swims shallow swims and everything in between. I just couldn’t buy a bite. Poor Steve wasn’t fairing any better.

Well I ended the day fishing a lovely crease in the river upstream that just shouted chub. Nothing, cheese paste on the hook and flake it didn’t make a difference a big fat blank. That was it off came the float out of the bands and on went a piece of cheese paste. So ledgering with a 15ft float rod looks daft (no stranger to that). So the 15ft qivertip rod did register a bite and the strike met with a fighting chub of 3.5lbs.

3.5lb chub from the Wye

So at last there was a photo.

On went some more cheese paste and again the tip wrapped around and another chub came along at 3lbs.

3lbs 8oz Wye chub

So with the light fading very fast on a dull day in more ways than one we packed up. Steve had a blank, and to think he turned down a day working had me thinking perhaps he made the wrong decision. Sorry Steve!

But he did say a bad day fishing is better than working.

Of course the nagging doubt in the mind is whether using maggots would have made the difference, we will never know. However we are £40 better off in our pockets.

I thought I would show a video of one of my big chub from 3 weeks ago.