After I caught my recent Personal Best chub at 8lb 14oz, I’d wondered how I’d feel about carrying on fishing for them. Winter chub fishing has become such an integral part of my angling year that I couldn’t just give it up. Could I?
In the weeks following that capture a mixture of snow and ice, more heavy floods and ill health conspired to keep me away from the riverbank so when the first opportunity arose a month later I went down to see what conditions were like.
Coloured water, a touch of extra flow and a day that wasn’t forecast to rain, how could I resist? It was a bit cold, but I wasn’t going to worry overmuch about that! It just felt good to be out.
There were a few small fish topping and I thought there was a good chance of a chub so the rods were set up for each margin, a boilie hookbait and small pva freebie cast into position and off we go.
Checking the baits after ninety minutes the air temperature had plummeted to zero and my fingers and toes were frozen! An hour after that and I decided I really didn’t have to be there if I didn’t want to be, so I started packing up. I was just folding the brolly when the bleeping started. Momentarily disoriented, I remembered I was actually fishing again, and on picking up the rod the culprit felt quite solid.
The fish made me work hard to bring it in to the net and it wasn’t ‘til I saw that familiar big, white mouth in the gloom that I really knew it was a chub…And it was another big one.
With the scales registering 8lb 6oz I knew I wouldn’t be giving up my winter chubbing for a while yet. It’s no mean feat, and always a thrill, to outwit these River Lea monsters and to see them in the flesh, after all who knows when the day will come when they disappear?
Two different 8lb chub in 3 trips – I would never have believed it!
