Getting what I went for...

Its well into summer now and i still hadn't caught a proper river chub. One thing i love about summer river fishing is the chub, you cannot get better than an aggressive chub take, they literally nearly tug the rod out of your hand.

I've been wanting to fish for them for a few weeks now but it hasn't happened and Ive been abit put off doing the mileage to get to them because last time i was out that way the rivers were quite coloured despite hardly any rain.

I manged to find out from a mate that the river was low and clear and i had a good after noon and evening to go at them so off I headed.
On arrival the river was not actually as clear as I'd have liked, but there was good visibility just not so good in the deeper areas. I set about casting shallow cranks in likely looking areas but the chub were nowhere to be seen. I fished this river about two years ago when conditions were not the best and always found chub in these areas, in fact i was hoping today i would actually find them more widespread because the previous visits had shown them to be in the one area and then nothing at all for miles of river either way.

Eventually i got a good whacking take literally as the small crank hit the surface, i knew it was a chub and it went low so i thought it would be a good one. It surfaced and it was a nice one, this lead into me excitedly scrambling to the waters edge to net it before the hooks pulled. Brilliant! a chub, exactly what I had come for which made all the planning and driving worthwhile with just this one fish.
There wasn't really anywhere to stand my camera so after abit of messing about i took a quick photo then put the fish back without checking my camera. sadly for what ever reason the photo had come out all bleached and so bright you could hardly make anything out. Ive managed to make something of the photo by turning it black and white and adding allot of contrast, just enough to be able to pick out the fish which was a belter. A shame i didn't get a photo to show it off better but never mind.

 

I carried on downstream hoping for more fish of the same calibre, the river looked really good in areas and very 'chubby' but no fish were showing at all. like previous visits the fish seem to be only in that one area. I walked and fished for a few miles only managing to pick up a few small perch and pinging off a couple of micro jacks before getting hold of them.

 

 

It felt pretty pointless going much further as nothing was improving, I thought I'd have another go in the hot area before going past it and fishing upstream. This proved a good decision at first because in the hot area I was running my crank really tight to a nearside tree when there was a massive swirl and again the rod was nearly yanked out of my hand! Another chub of a good size! What a shame the rest of the river does not produce more of these...

 

 

Up stream also produced nothing other than a few small perch and another tiny pike that did not want to stay hooked for very long. This river produces really good chub to baits but really this particular stretch is not all that productive to lures, I did get two nice ones but allot of river was fished for nothing in return. I think next time i get out for chub I'll explore some other areas or a different river well known for them.

 

I had just enough time to go fish another area on my way home, hopefully i would pick up a decent pike or maybe a good perch to add to the chub I'd caught.

The rivers are very strange this year, we have hardly had any rain at all yet the rivers are out of sorts with colour. The river i stopped off at on the way home only had about 6" visibility and its 20ft in places so it was kind of going to be like finding a needle in a haystack trying to tempt a fish. I did get a fish in the way of a decent perch but that was it.

 

 

I went home smelling of chub, with my arm hairs matted together with slime and tingling from all the nettle stings.... now that's what chubbing is all about!