Wednesday 11 January 2017

River Tone 8th Jan 2017 Chub Hunting

Firstly Happy New Year to everyone and i hope you all had a lovely Christmas
Well it seems to have been a long time with no reports, due to work and family Fishing has been limited to say the least but a new year has brought new optimism and with that in mind me and Robbie headed to the Free stretch of the River Tone hoping to catch our first River Chub.
We arrived around Lunchtime and instantly realized that a match may be taking place as there were lots of cars parked along the side of the road leading to the Cinema.
I wandered down to the river and met a very obliging angler who explained there was a match on but if we headed towards the Memorial seats we should be fine as there was only 1 other angler that way.
So we unloaded the car and headed towards and beyond the motorway bridge setting on a lovely looking swim just beyond a small stream where we could see plenty of large Roach in the clear water.
I quickly set up a Waggler rod and had a few runs through checking the depth and once happy attached 2 red maggots and cast out whilst Robbie fired some Maggot and Casters towards the float.
First run through and a small roach took the maggot and i was happy that we weren't going to blank.
I had roach on  4 of my first 8 runs so decided to let  Robbie have a go whilst i set up a small cage feeder on our second rod.
Robbie had a roach every run through and the size started to increase upto around 4oz.
After i set the feeder rod up and cast under a overhanging branch i asked Robbie if he would watch the feeder so iIcould try the waggler again.
Second run Through and a bite materialized but this time the strike was met with more resistance a lovely chub around 12oz leapt from the water before being guided to our landing net.
Next run and another smaller chub was hooked so I let Robbie back on the waggler hoping he may catch one.
He didn't but continued to catch roach of a decent size.
The feeder remained motionless so i decided to try a cast to the far bank where there appeared to be a slight undercut in the bank
The rod had only been out a couple of seconds when it sprung back and the line started to move away from the bank I struck and felt resistance but it didn't last long and the fish was off.
I told to Robbie to leave the waggler and watch the feeder I cast again to the same spot  and before I could put the rod on the rest i felt a sharp tug i quickly passed the rod to Robbie and he gleefully wound in a beautiful Chub around a Pound so Bigger than mine.
We continued catching quality roach on the waggler but the feeder only brought 1 more small chub and afew Roach.
Close to 3 o clock I had a nice Hybrid around a pound which was very pleasing but it started to get cold so we decided to wander back to the car.
We managed to just catch the angler who guided us earlier and he said he had caught roughly 8kg of roach mainly on the whip during the match which is a lovely days fishing but also said the gentleman fishing further down had caught 13Kg of Roach which is an incredible day but shows the potential of this lovely River.
In all a nice days fishing and i must also pass on a Thank you to Ivan Currie for his advice on this river