March 11th with Andrea and 9 chub

I had met Andrea at the Oxford pike talk I gave in January. He asked me to take him chub fishing later in the year as he was desperate to fish. So we arranged to fish the Bristol Avon for chub before the end of the season.

Andrea is a mature student completing a PHD and is studying in Oxford for 6 months. He was telling me about all his fishing exploits in Italy. His pb chub stood at 1.3kg from a canal back home.

Well we were on the river bank quite early at about 7.10am. Weather wise it was forecast to be very windy (29mph) from the east and very cold.  I will state now that it was possibly the strongest winter easterly wind I had experienced and combined with the sub zero temperature it was going to be a tough session.

Float fishing was going to be the preferred method. Andrea coped with the windy conditions very well and on the first trot down after feeding maggots into the swim he hooked and landed his very first UK fish and a chub bigger than anything he had caught before. It weighed just under 3lbs.

There was a dreadful upstream wind making trotting very difficult, also the bitter raw temperature made it uncomfortable.

Andrea though is young and tough (they breed them like this in northern Italy) and was enjoying catching the chub.

The next fish was his largest of the day at 4lbs 4oz.

Andrea 4lb 4oz chub

He also caught a lovely small brown trout too.

He finally hooked a wonderful chub that fought very hard in the fast current.

Andrea playing a chub

The chub was just under the 4lb mark.

Just under 4lbs

Chub 3lbs plus

We changed swims after landing the last fish and wandered downstream. The next swim was one where a couple of partial submerged trees give the chub some cover. After feeding the swim for a few minutes again the first trot through produced a chub.

Then as the wind increased in speed the air temperature must have dropped lower as ice started to form in the rod rings. Each and every time the net was emptied of a netted chub it soon froze too. Andrea was very amused by this.

We caught another nice trout and two more chub before the wind made it practically impossible to trot the float through. The ice forming in the rings added to the challenge too.

Small brown trout

We fished a couple of more swims but eventually had to abandon the float rod and start using the ledgering rod.

Two missed bites in one swim and another lost fish in another swim showed that they were feeding on the cheese.

We moved stretches to see if we could catch a larger chub still using the ledger rod. However in the first swim he caught a small chub of about 1.5lbs after missing a few bites. Eventually he caught two more chub, nothing huge but around the 2-3 lb mark.

So in the end at 6.15pm and the wind still blowing a gale and temperatures dropping like a stone we decided to finish the session and head for home.

Andrea then told me it was his first time trotting and fishing a small river. 9 chub and 2 trout was a good return on a day when even the most experienced anglers would have had difficulties controlling the line in such harsh conditions. Well done Andrea…….next session tench fishing in the spring when it might be warmer!