The Joy of Chubbing

It's a few weeks since my last post, and for that I apologise. But I've had a busy few weeks and it has not invovled much fishing.

Part of the reason we have not been on the water much is that Charlie and I have decided that we would like to catch two particular species of river fish. In order to achieve this we have had to undertake a lot of research in order to locate a river which is both near enough and also holds these target species. We are desperate to catch both grayling and barbel. This is quite a tall order living in Mid Kent. We have however dicovered a club which holds the fishing rights to parts of the Upper Medway and Tiese. The Medway in its upper reaches holds barbel, chub, grayling (in small numbers) and some trout. So we have been saving our pennies so that we can join the club and target these fish throughout the winter months.

I did, however, manage a short chub session on my own at the river Eden a couple of weeks ago. I was not expecting much from the short afternoon/evening session. The water had been low and very clear, but we did experience a little rain in the preceding days so the river was rising a little and slightly coloured.

In most of our previous sessions at this particular swim we had either caught a decent sized fish almost straight away or a few smaller ones.When we started with smaller fish - often around one pound - we seemed to scare away the bigger fish and rarely had much luch for the rest of the session.

So, I was not put off by the quiet start I was having. In fact I was surprised  and quite excited. I hoped it meant the smaller chublets were elsewhere today and that the their bigger brothers and sisters may be in residence.

My tackle for the day included a feeder rod, five pound line and a freelined lob worm or large cube of spam, on a size 8 hook. Simple but often effective chub tactics. There is a deep hole under a tree, on the near bank, that was just off the main flow.

As evening approached I started to wonder if my spot was empty of fish as I had only had a couple of slight knocks. But as I had not been hassled by smaller fish, I was still hoping the larger, more timid fish were still around. But nothing happened. My worms were gone and the last piece of was on the hook. Typically I had a very good rod bending bite that saw me lose the last of the bait. I was about to pack up when I remembered the cheese sandwich in my ruck sack. I rolled the cheese into a paste and tried one last cast. Somewhat disgruntled at this stage, it has to be said.

It was totally dark, pouring with rain and my torch batteries were about to die. Then BANG! I pulled into what I knew was a fantastic fish. It flew into the treee roots to my right and it genuinely took all of my strength to pull it left away from the snags. It then made a splash so large that I thought I had hooked a carp. But as is often the case with chub, after it's initial strong resistance, I was able to get it into netting range.

I actually shouted 'F++k me it's a huge chub'. A strange thing when on your own in the dark.

But the fun was not over yet. With my heart racing it filled my landing net and all was calm. Or so I thought. I then realised I was on a slippery six foot bank, with a large bramble bush directly in front and no other clear space either side to lift the beast. So instead of taking the strain from the pole and lifting vertically I had to lean out past the bushed and raise the landing net pole horizontally. It snapped about two feet from the net. A comedy couple of minutes with ensued, ending with me covered in scratches and thorns, covered in mud and very close to a swim in a pitch black river with no light at all.

While I have caught larger fish over the years, this specimen is the nearest to a record fish that I have had. I think the British record is around nine and a half pounds. This beauty was around seven pounds. It was very difficult to get a true reading from the scales in the dark, on my own, but it is fair to say it was either side of seven.

I was fishing alone so pictures and video are of terrible quality. I really wish the boy was with me to enjoy the moment and to photograph me holding it.


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