29th December Bristol Avon chubbing

I’ve also had man flu which has laid me low, but hey ho I’m out on the banks of the Bristol Avon and float fishing for chub. Now those of you that know me I’m a great believer in float fishing for the chub in clear water. Sure enough the river had been up a little during the last week or so but had dropped down to a good winter level with excellent visibility.

The float rod was my trusted 15ft Hardy Marksman with 4lb line and a 5bb stick float and a size 20 hook to 3lb line. For bait I was using my normal 3 pints of red maggots and had 4pints of red rice. This is probably enough to feed a couple of swims for an afternoon. I normally feed the swim for 20 minutes before fishing with 50/50 rice and maggot to get the chub feeding competitively.

I met Kevin who was fishing for pike and had a take on his first cast but couldn’t get another from a very promising swim. He and Paddy had fished the previous day and had some chub and barbel so at least they were feeding.

I arrived at a deep bend where there are normally a good few chub to 5lbs plus. I fished it for about an hour and had a few chub, roach and dace. Kevin saw me land the largest chub of about 2lbs. The wind blew really strongly upstream and combined with the flow the area that I knew the chub lay was difficult to guide the float through.

I soon moved upstream to a swim that normally produces some great chub, but other than the odd small chub and dace combined with the odd small roach none of the larger chub put in an appearance.

So with the last hour of the daylight  looming I found another swim where I’ve had some good chub. Feeding the swim for about 15 minutes I let the float sail down past some nearside willow branches but towards the slacker deeper water on the far side. At the end of the trot the float shot under and a strike met with a satisfying curve in the rod and with the chub tugging back I put on maximum pressure to bring it upstream I slide the net under a lovely pigeon chested chub of about 3lbs.

Red rice great for feeding chub

Continuing to feed the rice and maggots each trot down I must have caught another 5 more chub up to just over 4lbs. No really large fish showed however I was well pleased with the afternoons catch. I remember last year fishing the same swim just after the big freeze in December and catching a good chub using the same method but this year it wasn’t going to be the same. Try this approach on your local river and you may be surprised at the result.

Here is a photo of the chub caught last year and where the dog licked the lens of the camera.

Lens licked by the dog