John Bailey – The Kingfisher Diaries
August 13th 2009
Chub - the Wiliest of Fish
Just returned from a whole raft of guiding days down on the River Wye. A lot of barbel so that was good but it was the chub fishing that was particularly interesting. Though the river was high and coloured most of the time, there were enough sightings of chub to make you realise just how wary of bait and terminal tackle they are.
Now you can take this on board or not. It's your choice. All I'd say is, the more seriously you take your chub then the more you are likely to catch. Run any risk of spooking them and you will struggle. Think of every way to avoid spooking them and you'll succeed.
Coming back to the Wensum, the Wye observations were only made the more valid.
Again I was guiding close to the Kingfisher stretch of river. There were two chub under a raft. They looked up for it and I expected it to be easy. Bait was going to be the meat from some leftover sausage rolls. This is exactly what happened. I threw in two loose offerings that were greedily accepted, one a-piece for each of the fish. The next two offerings were totally ignored. The chub simply departed, evidently skittish, spooked and not coming back. For a whole hour, those pieces of sausage meat lay uneaten.
Bread? With most Wensum chub now, you must be joking. They won't go near the stuff. Sweetcorn the same. I've even had problems with maggots. They'll hit them hard as hell for a minute or so and then, again, become unsettled, fidgety and ready to disappear.
Now, I'm considering not putting any free offerings into a swim but making sure the hook bait is the first to go in. Perfectly presented if possible. One cast and that's it.
It's not unreasonable to suspect that as chub get older and bigger, they get wiser. And, on the Wensum at least, because of the otter boom, numbers are dropping. This means less competition. It also means that the chub are more generally spooked more of the time and this simply makes them even less approachable.