This week i managed to get an after work session in, the first of the year infact, and i decided to experiment a little and try for a Chub or two on fish baits. Ive not fished with fish baits intentionally for Chub before although i have caught them on livebaits and lures meant for Perch. Ive read so many accounts of outsized Chub falling to chunks of Mackerel and Sardine that i had to give it go in the hope of a late season lump.
The only bait i had with me upon arrival at the river was a tub of Prawns and a couple of Sardines. This was deliberate on my part to stop me falling back on the old faithful bread and cheesepaste if i was to struggle! Prawns arnt exactly what i had in mind as an out and out fish bait because many species of fish love a nice Prawn or two as we know but i took them anyway to build up some confidence towards sticking a chunk of sardine on!
I baited the swim with some liquidised bread mixed with broken up Prawns and made my first cast. It was about 10minutes before i had a bite which was promptly missed. I didnt make the same mistake on my next cast and was rewarded with a Chub just shy of 4lb. A good start i thought and after another half hour of no bites i upped sticks to another swim. I missed a bite straight away on the Prawn here and decided that there might be a few down there so the Sardine chunk was put into action.
It was a good while before i had any indication, in fact i was starting to wonder if the bait was even still on the hook. Suddenly i was alerted to a sharp tap on the tip, i had visions of six pounders going through my head so as you can imagine when the tip pulled around hard and i struck into thin air i was somewhat disappointed! Still. id had a bite so there was something down there which liked the look of the bait. A short while later and the light levels were really starting to drop now as daytime became night and i was struggling to see the tip. There was no mistaking the next bite though, the tip pulled around so hard i thought the fish had hooked itself but once again there was nothing there.
After this i packed up, pleased to have had bites on the sardine but frustrated to have missed them. I can only assume the fish were holding the bait in their lips and moving off causing me to strike the bait clean out of their mouths.
I was gonna fish all day Sunday but heavy rain on Saturday put the river levels right back up which put paid to any Chub aspirations i had. I couldnt get motivated enough to head for a lake so i never bothered in the end.
You might have noticed that ive added a facebook link on the right hand side of the page. Ive set up an account for fishing only with the idea being that visitors to the blog can contact me and give me some constructive feedback on the blog . Im not exactly genned-up on the whole facebook thing and its a bit of an experiment really so bear with it and for gods sake add me as a friend or ill be a very sad and lonely facebooker!
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