End Of Season Chubbing

The final weekend of the season arrived and I was struggling to find a slot to get out. With the weather feeling very spring-like, I simply had to find a few hours - especially as I had bait already waiting in the fridge. I managed to squeeze a 4 hour session into Saturday afternoon and I took a punt that a small pool on the River Blythe would be empty. I'm pleased to say that it was!

I spent a very pleasant 4 hours alternating maggots, caster and bread on a light straight lead set up. Bites came fairly quickly on the maggot and I caught a few Chub in the 6-8oz class. A better stamp fish of around 2.5lbs then put in an appearance, which gave me a chance to test out my new camera adaptor that I'd rigged up in anticipation for some self takes.

I snaffled another similar stamp fish a while later,  but this one had  been in a few scrapes in its time. The photo actually shows its best side!

A switch to bread saw me pull out of a fish early in the scrap and things went quiet for a while. Even a switch back to maggots didn't see any improvement. I didn't use my brain quickly enough though - if I'd remembered back to my only previous session in this swim, I'd have recalled that the fish seemed to drop back down the swim as the session wore on.

As soon as I chucked the lead an extra 5 yards downstream, the tip started moving again. I managed a couple of small fish and one other Chub in the 2.5lb class before time got the better of me.

In total I had around 10lb of Chub to end my river season. No big fish, but a pleasant enough end to the campaign on a small river.