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Tag Archives: chub

2015 – My Highlights – Part 2: Clear River Stalking for Chub & Barbel

A hard-fought chub of 4lb 10oz, caught on an improvised float rig from an "impossible" swim

In the second of my Highlights of 2015 posts I once again visit the Derbyshire Derwent, but a different stretch this time. The session provided me with a great insight into the lives of barbel & chub when this river is exceptionally low and clear… Fishing for barbel & chub in clear water on the Derwent Every now and again, a fishing session comes along which unexpectedly knocks you sideways.  Sometimes it can be a red letter day in the form of the number or size of fish you catch, other times it’s the things you see or the whole experience. I had one such day last July, where it was the latter which made the day special.  I caught some fish but the overriding highlights of the day were the things I witnessed.  Forgive me if I get carried away describing something you see regularly, but because I don’t fish during the daytime very often, this whole experience was something quite special for me. It started when I decided to head to a stretch of the River Derwent which I had only ever fished once, several years ago.  It was primarily a reconnaissance session to reaquiant myself with the swims …

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Caught In The Act Review – Parts 3 & 4 – Autumn & Winter

Caught In The Act Parts 3 & 4 DVD

By reading this review, chances are you’re already familiar in some way with the Caught In The Act project, you’ve either watched parts 1 & 2 or read my previous review.  I think it was clear that I really enjoyed the first two films and I must say that the Autumn & Winter instalments in parts 3 & 4 do not disappoint. Just in case you’re not familiar with the format, each of the two DVDs is split into five ‘acts’ of around 15 minutes each.  Stu Walker and Bob Roberts film all of the footage themselves besides presenting the films, taking turns to be behind the camera or behind the rods.  They are also joined in a couple of the Autumn & Winter acts by friend James Gould, who manages to more-than-justify his appearance with the capture of some fine specimens for the cameras.   There’s also a short sketch of what I believe is the first fully animated version of the “Jack’s Pike” cartoon strip by Brian Roberts, which Bob regularly features in his blog. The fishing in CITA is never complicated, just simple rigs and techniques done extremely well.  No angler should feel out of their depth when …

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Odds, sods and a quick rant…

Fraser Holland first chub - 4lb+

This is another quick post from an internet café.  I’m on holiday, you see, until tomorrow, so burglars you’ve got one last chance! The house is actually the reason for both my blog-slackness and my wider angling-slackness for almost the entirity of the river closed season and beyond.  I finally took the plunge and bought my first place with my girlfriend, Jen. Needless to say, there was a lot more to the whole process than I’d anticipated… Still, I’ve finally started to get a few sessions in, which I’m pleased to say have yielded very few blanks. So far I’ve had barbel to around 9lb off the rivers and a good few carp off the surface on some local lakes too. I also took my 13 year-old cousin Fraser for his first-ever river session a week or so ago where, under my guidance, he managed to land a clonking new PB chub of 4lb 5oz on simple groundbait feeder techniques. Not a bad first river fish at all; I reckon I was 19 before I’d caught a chub of that size. The only thing was the pesky chub was very lively on the bank and every time I pressed the …

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Worm Keeping Without a Wormery – No Hassle, Fresh Fishing Bait

Fresh lobworms are a fantastic fishing bait for all sorts of species

In the weeks ahead there will be many anglers stocking up on worms and for good reason. They’re a superb, bait all-year-round for all manner of coarse fish (including wels catfish) and while everything from a stickleback to a pike will take a worm, they can often be the bait that will sort out that specimen-sized fish; this is especially true during Autumn and Winter. Who needs a smorgasbord of bait when you’ve got these beauties?! Whether you go out on your lawn collecting worms by torchlight or if you’re lazy like me and buy them, in these difficult economic times it makes sense to look after such a precious angling commodity. Worms rarely visit the surface during the winter, so you’ll struggle collecting them and if you buy them mail order, it’s often cheaper to buy in bulk. So, it makes sense to stock up now and try to keep your worms alive and healthy, ready for use whenever you need them. I must admit that although effective baits, I’ve never really used or kept redworms, so the info below may not apply to them. Maybe someone with experience of keeping them could email me with details! I’ve tried …

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Wake Me Up When September Ends

Big barbel fishing, PB

Since my last post I’ve fished a few times but it’s been pretty slow going.  Just last night I went Zander fishing and ended up with an 8lb pike and lost a good fish, which may well have been a zed, but I’ll never know… This follows an all-day barbel session last week with friends Craig and Kev.  I fished all day on a prolific stretch of the Trent and despite trying all sorts of baits, fining down, stepping up to a 6 foot hooklength and even trying single maggot hookbaits, I didn’t even get a sniff of a barbel.  I caught a couple of dace when fishing maggot (on a 2.25lb TC barbel rod, size 16 hook and 14lb mainline!), which is a species I haven’t caught since I don’t know when. I even spotted a pike swim towards a plastic bag which was fluttering downstream.  It then proceeded to follow it downstream, deciding whether or not to strike at it!  Interesting to see such behaviour, but it was a stark reminder just what harm our rubbish can potentially do to our wildlife and with the pike season just around the corner (come on frosts!), please take care with your …

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River Chub Brace

River chub brace - 4lb & 5lb chub fish

I recently captured my best-ever chub brace, landing this 5lb 2oz specimen (left), followed by a 4lb 8oz fish while I was setting up my camera! I risked life & limb to land the latter fish, because I was fishing a peg with a very steep – almost vertical – bank leading down to the water. I wanted to rest the chub in my landing net, in the margins, but as this wasn’t possible where I was fishing, I took the net and fish a couple of swims downstream where the margins were shallow and calm. As I was setting up the self-timer function on my camera, the alarm on my other rod screamed!  I was left to battle the fish in a deep, fast-water peg with no landing net! Standing between me and the net were 3 trees, overhanging the water. There was no way over or around them, so I had to (in the dark), scale the steep bank, test the margin depth with my toe whilst holding onto a tree with one hand and the rod in the other. Luckily there was a narrow, rocky ledge about a foot under the water, so I slowly shuffled along this, negotiated the trees and a …

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See, I can still catch perch!

A decent perch from Tibshelf Ponds permit pond

Sorry everyone, this post is almost 2 months late!  I started typing it shortly after the session and then never got the time to finish it!  So for now, here’s a slightly rushed post, but I’ve a fair bit of fishing planned in the near future so expect a flurry of activity on here very soon! A couple of weeks after the rivers closed I headed to local fishery, Tibshelf Ponds, to target the resident perch which are numerous (It used to be my local water and I would catch several, most times I fished there as a child), but I had an inkling that there were some really large ones there to be caught too. I set up with a combination of a swimfeeder rod (switching between a groundbait feeder & maggot feeder) and a heavy pole float fished on a new Bolognese rod that I’d bought and was keen to try out.  Bolognese rods have never really taken off in the UK, they are designed to fish the deep canals & slow rivers of mainland Europe, and they’re basically a telescopic whip (mine’s 6 metres long) with a reel seat and a rod ring on every section.  They’re …

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A flexible approach to specialist fishing

Lure caught river chub

I very often lumber myself with far too much tackle – travelling light is something I wish I was better at – but sometimes it pays to have a few non-essential items, “just in case”. This is especially true if you’re travelling a long way from home to a fishery and don’t have the option of returning home if things aren’t quite as expected. One can never be sure exactly what to expect when arriving at a fishery; no matter how well you’ve done your homework on weather, etc. there’s always a chance that the water conditions and fish behaviour you’ve planned for are a million miles from reality. I do believe in remaining as flexible as possible in my approach to angling and I know for a fact that having a bit of extra tackle with me has saved me from a blank, or helped me put an extra fish or two on the bank, on many occasions. A prime example of this was a recent zander session on the Great Ouse. I’d taken some frozen deadbaits with me, but zander are notoriously picky feeders, and they will mostly take a fresh deadbait more readily than a pre-frozen one; …

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Hello blogsville!

Barbel fishing tactics summer barbel freelined luncheon meat touch-legering

Hi, this is not a proper blog post – I intend to post one of those very soon – it’s just a test to see how my profile’s looking. A lovely Barbel I caught last-cast on the simplest of methods; touch-legering luncheon meat under a near-bank tree Once properly up and running this is going to be a blog about fishing in the UK and abroad, updated whenever I’ve got something to say in between writing my Fishing Articles. If you like to fish for specimen Barbel, Pike, Perch, Zander, Chub, Roach, Rudd, Grayling and occasionally Carp, then head over to my website to check out some of my instructional articles & videos, then check back here soon for new blog posts. Thanks for checking my stuff out!

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