Aren't these lighter evenings great !

[barbelblanker]

OK so I was in work and saw it was a lovely day.

I had maggots left over from the weekend sat in my fridge and a burning desire to actually put a bend in the rod.

So it was off down the Staffs Worcester to do some chubby fishing right at the top of the BAA stretch.

Planned to fish from 17:30 onwards and was bang on schedule.

When I got there three blokes were packing up and had had a few chub and other ,smaller stuff .

So I set up above them and got the pole out.

Sorted out a light rig which I put a no6 above the float as there was a bit of an upstream gust and it was pretty standard maggot on the pole down the middle from then on.

It was a gudgeon a chuck for ages, then a few roach turned up. Then more gudgeon.

Standard roach feeding was just resulting in even more gudgeon so I started feeding a little heavier and "plopping" the maggots on the water by throwing them high up and splashing them down.

It worked.

I caught even MORE gudgeon.

Now after this winter it was great to be catching at all, but even I was wondering where the hell the chub where.

More splashing of maggots, changed to a new hook length as I suspected the old one had got blunt.

Changed the shotting to nail it hard to the bottom.

Instant results.

More gudgeon.

So I spread the shot out to register bites on the drop and carried on feeding them maggots.

More gudgeon.

Then I remembered an old tip I had almost forgotten. It was in the "best bit of advise" thread on this very forum.

So I poured myself a nice cup of good old stewed tea and balanced it on my knee while I put the flask down. JUST as I got the cup down on my mostly vancant bait stand I spotted the float shoot under out of the corner of my eye and struck.

CHUB!!!!! About two pounds and putting a serious stretch in the 6 elastic. It ran straight across the canal and went in to the bush roots (what a chub run for cover NEVER). With my head singing one of my all time classic favourite sounds "Run to the hills" - Iron Maiden ( don't ask me why but I nearly always hear that when chub do the bushs thing "Run to the hills , run for your lives, DUn de duh Dun de Duh", it just sums it all up for me in a mad Welsh kind of way :):):) ) I somehow managed to steer it to the net and unhook it.

Then it was back to gudgeon.

Maybe I am not feeding enough.
So more maggots and a few chucks through and RUN TO THE HILLS, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES.......SNAP!! First time in absolutely ages a fish snapped me off on the pole. Hook length went twang! And the fish was in them there hills.

Quick rehook later (whoever came up with blindingly obvious ploy of tying all your hook lengths the same length......obvious, simple and yet I never used to do it), quick check of the depth and ....more gudgeon.

Feed , feed , feed, unhook gudgeon, by now I've stopped even trying to estimate, it's over 50 by now.

Then a small chub, maybe 8 oz. A good sign if you ask me though as it means there are little ones coming from somewhere.

A few more gonks then it's another bite and "Women and children and cowards ATTACK!" and ping! No! Another chub gets away but this time it's a hook pull.

Argh! No!

Few more gudgeon and by now the feed is going in high and often, it's nearly 8 and the light is going.

"Run to the hills", here we go again. This one is the biggest but I had realised that the mistake I made when I lost the other two was to point the pole at the far side. This time I bunged on a couple more sections and got a nice 90 degree angle on and let the elastic really do the work.

Come to Pete.

In the net.

A few more gudgeon and another rendition of an Iron maiden classic and it was time to pull out the keepnet and go home.

Overall and enjoyable couple of hours after work and great to know that , now , when the mood takes me I can pop out after work and piscatorially relax.

And I learnt a bit too. Like just how greedy chub are when they switch on and that once you stop that first run for the hills, sorry, far bank cover , they are manageable.

Even on 1.7 LB line and a size 20 hook :)

Sorry about the one and only piccy, by the time I took this it was getting dark and I was using my phone. So you can't see all the gudgeon buried under the couple of decent canal chub.



Tight lines!

[MRG2000]

Nice result Peter ....

[the pyromaniac]

Like I said over at here-fishyfishy, that was legendary and I really got a kick out of reading it!

[Jolly Piscator]

LoL , great report , loved reading that . Think I'm going to have that song playing in my head for the rest of the day . Well done on a great little session , beats watching TV any day .

[barbelblanker]

I post my reports to both these days. I feel that this is something we can all do to support the forums we are active in. The more reports we post , the bigger the forums get and the more support. It takes a lot of work to get these forums up and going . Both the originators and moderators take a lot of their own time to run
them. I see it as a way of showing our appreciation of their efforts. The beauty of supporting different forums is that they have a different flavour.

[the pyromaniac]

I'm with you on that one! There's 4 forums I visit daily, and two of them are fairly new and need support. I love the different vibe from the different forums and really enjoy the differing atmospheres and points of view.