A whole raft of problems…

The weather is all over the shop isn’t it, unseasonably mild in the most part but then some a cold morning is followed by a mild one. To add to that the wind doesn’t know what it’s doing either. The evening before my short session after mulling a few things over in my mind I decided to try for a Chub under a nice looking raft on a regular stretch of the Warwickshire Avon I fish. The classic Chub hidey hole.

The river has dropped significantly in a week and it was back to clear again so not ideal conditions but hopefully the raft would offer the sanctuary and security for a big Chevin.

The swim is quite exposed so with the wind gusting I wanted to give it a couple of hours or so and then move to a more sheltered swim. Tactics were two superglued cavier pellets from Lone Angler on a simple running rig. Talking of superglue I’ve found the best to be the small precision tubes. Not so much the gluing ability more the fact the nozzle doesn’t seem to clog up and the top is easily removable even after being used >10 times. 

My best Chub is a rather pathetic 4lb 9oz, I’ve caught bigger in the past but sods law, ‘it was this big’ etc I’d not had scales to hand to weigh them. I’ve set myself a target for this winter, a 5lb’er at least and I’ve no doubt the local stretches I fish has them, no question.

It took ¾’s of an hour for the first bite and it was a half decent Chub, 3lb 14oz’s in fact and at first glance at its tail I thought it was the Chub I’d caught 5 times before, but this was twice its size and closer inspection there were differences. It had a clonker of a head so lots of growing to do, some February it would probably be what I’m after. 

 

I rested the swim for ½ an hour and tried a swim further upstream without even a nibble. I returned to the raft and within a second I had a bite and hooked a fish, only a small Chub though and unluckily for him a Pike came up from the depths and grabbed it, it happened to me last week too, there certainly seems to be lots around. I was only using 5lb line but it stood up the Pike far better than I thought, sadly the inevitable happened and it broke me off. The swim was ruined and with the raft significantly smaller I called it day.