Warwickshire Avon - Chub Love and Chthonophagia

I reckon this is up there with my favourite meals. A simple dish of pork mince, garlic, ginger, green beans, dark soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil, birds eye chillies, a small amount of caster sugar, spring onions, jasmine rice and the key ingredients plenty of ground Sichuan pepper.

One of those super quick dishes as well as after prepping takes literally minutes to make where when you lead a busy life makes all the difference.

The birds eye chillies just the right amount of heat with added pungency you don't tend to get from other varieties of chilli. Too much kick for the Wife mind you but milder chilli flakes can be added instead to suit you palate. 

Now talking of quick and favourite, one of my early season tactics when the water is like an aquarium is fishing bread on the surface for chub. They wise up quick though so you have to make hay and try and winkle out as many fish as you can before they decide to put they middle fin up.

Conditions were absolutely perfect for this early morning sortie despite the breeze but the cloud cover was extensive and would clear mid morning where I knew it would be much harder to tempt any fish.

I've a dedicated rod now for the tactic and that is the Angling Direct John Wilson Quiver Rod, I use the Avon top mainly because I trapped the quiver section where the tips fit into in the electric garage door whoops !! I store all my broken down rods in a cardboard tube and it just so happened to be next to the garage and they splayed out just that little bit too far, 🙈

Take this swim though where the first fish succumbed to the bread on the surface, there are reeds on the far side and plenty of streamer weed so any fish when it is hooked had quite a few escape routes, and chub being chub they will find everyone of them.

It's a cumbersome rod if I'm honest but absolutely perfect for this purpose when you have to bully the fish away from the snags. What I didn't expect that the first fish was caught within a few minutes after the chub that were in the swim were hovering up the bread on the top without a care in the world.

 A proper dogged fight and there was a good reason for that as it was 5lb on the nose. After heading straight for the reeds I had to climb up the bank with the rod bent double and walk back holding the reel spool as it was taking line.

It's a heavy set-up for a good reason though with 6lb line straight through to a size 6 Drennan Super Specialist wide gape hook, because often the fish are hooked a long way down the swim and like I said you more often than not have to be quickly on the fish before they exit that escape room.

This is a roving game going from swim to swim to swim to either visually spot the fish or find out where the fish are by watching them take it off the surface. It's such a visual bait bread and chub are geared up for this method better than other species. 

Now Brian from the excellent Pike Blog catches barbel using this method which I find amazing as in this neck of the woods barbel ignore bread altogether even if it's wafted past their nose when trundling a peice along the bottom. Well in my experience anyway, it's a fruitless exercise, and believe you me I've tried plenty of times when I've stumbled upon them.

It was decent session in the end with 2 further fish caught in two different swims around the 3lb mark and I also lost one as well on the first bend of the rod where the hook I'd imagine didn't have a very good hold.

As soon as the sun came out to greet me it that was that, they were just not interested whatsoever. Not unexpected to be honest because the river couldn't be any clearer. You can literally see every single fish in the swim you are fishing. So a 2 hour session and 3 fish, I'm happy with that and a 5lber as well, that certainly fought like its statue, chub got to love them !!!