Friday 28 February 2020

The Chub Shoal


I headed to the river to check out a shoal of chub James had told me about - taking the stick ‘n’ pin to winkle one or two out while I was there. But I’m pretty sure even James didn’t know how big the shoal was - hundreds of chub - the water was black with them!


There was the odd roach and dace in the mix but it was basically a chub a cast - and even releasing them back into the shoal didn’t put them off. My morning mission was scrapped, this was going to take all day! I had 5 roach to 14oz, 6 dace to 6.9oz and a load of chub...


Seventy of them in fact!! Ranging is size from about 6oz to 1½lb, with a lot of fish around the pound mark. My biggest bag of river fish ever (excluding pike & barbel). I worked it out on the way home - that’s a fish every 6 minutes for 8 hours - and my arm and back are killing me!

8 comments:

  1. Were they finding refuse from high water? Just think of the pike that must have been shadowing them.

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    1. Yeah, the high water has pushed them into the slack and really bunched them up - and they were hungry! No pike, or any other predators - they only thing they had to worry about was me :-)

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  2. would have looked good in a big keepnet

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    1. I thought that as well, would have made a nice photo of them all together and I’d have got a total weight - sure it was over 50lb though. Next time (although I’m sure they will have split up now).

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  3. Crazy shoal. Have seen a 30 to 40 fish shoal of chub, average size 4lb on the Swale. That is some feeding shoal when it gets going!

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