13 chub from this one little swim in a short session!

As the river season has now drawn to a close I thought I’d give you something to think about for the back end of next season.

I find that in the last month or so of the season with the continuous cold nights and not particularly warm days there is a lot more chance of catching a few nice chub than there is of having much success with barbel.

Now don’t get me wrong, you can still catch the odd barbel (if you are prepared to put a lot of time in or if you fish areas of the Middle Severn or Wye where there can be lots of shoal fish in certain swims) but to me one of the best fun ways to almost guarantee some sport is with small stream chub.

My first taste of really small river chub fishing came in the last week of the season in 1997 (didn’t realise it was so long ago until I checked my old photo’s). I was fishing with a good mate of mine on the tiny River Mease near to Tamworth. The river here varies from as little as about 6ft wide up to maybe 2 rod lengths, with shallow fords of 6 inches deep to the odd 8 feet deep pool. Now on only my second trip to this beautiful little river we had a really cracking days fishing.

The river was running very low and clear and in some of the swims you could actually see the chub and by dropping a few handfuls of garlic hemp into some likely looking spots we soon had the fish feeding. What soon became apparent is that unlike most of the time, when the chub are in ones and twos (when small stream fishing) these fish were shoaled up. I have read various different pieces where it is reckoned chub will spawn as early as April if the conditions are right for them, so perhaps this was why the fish were in bigger groups than usual.

Anyway in that one short afternoon / evening session I managed to take 13 chub between approximately 3lb 4oz and 4lb 4oz and all from the same swim (usually have to move about a lot on such a small river).

This was really intimate fishing with a light rod and simple methods with most of the fish coming to maggots fed little and often and then cheese paste (very similar to the Quest chubby chops paste of today) as the light dipped.

My mate had 6 bigger chub to just over 5lbs so we had, had a cracking fun afternoon.

Now although we never caught any monsters and you are not likely to break any records on the Mease (although we did have chub to nearly 6lbs and perch to almost 3lbs between our little group), we had some of the most enjoyable fishing imaginable for a few winters. We hardly saw another angler and I can honestly say I learned a lot about fish behaviour by being able to watch the chub at such close quarters.

Many so called anti-eject rigs were proved to be just the opposite by the chub. At times they could be quite infuriating and you could clearly see them mouth a bait without either your line or rod tip moving. Careful feeding was the best way to boost their confidence and to get the best catches.

So if you fancy something different for the last couple of weeks of the season and you have a tiny river or stream by you, then go and have a go. Keep the tackle to a minimum and enjoy yourself, just because it may be a tiny river doesn’t mean it only holds tiny fish!

Cheers, Pat Gillett.

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