Deadbaiting For Chub (Yes, That's Right!)

Geplaatst Wit Vis Tactiek at Jan 03, 2011

For years Mick Brown has been targeting chub with deadbaits and has banked some monsters in the process. Here he explains his unconventional approach...

Most anglers see chub as gentle fish; going about their business quietly, feeding on any natural insect offerings that drift past as they sit among weed and under overhanging bushes. They are very partial to anglers’ baits too, making them relatively easy to catch. There’s very little we can offer them that they don’t fancy. Maggots, worms, bread are all regular favourites, but they accept the modern approach with pellets and boilies just as eagerly. What few realise, though, is that the chub is a flesh-eating killer and scavenger, and even fewer use this fact to their advantage when trying to catch them!

As a predator fishing fanatic, it has been my pleasure to catch hundreds of chub on fish baits and also lures. As a teenager, I would target them with live or dead minnows and in later years with roach livebaits, mackerel deadbaits, plus a wide range of lures from spoons to plugs. Rarely have I seen anyone else do so! I’ve never set out to prove that this approach is always the best one, simply to enjoy seeing the chub in all its glory, as the predator it can become when it needs to.

Narrow Window
To prove that it is possible I took up the challenge to catch a chub from my local River Welland, which was fining down after high water, on a deadbait.

With the river being icy cold, it was clear that chub would be the only fish that I could bank on catching. However, I knew that it would still be a challenge because the river had started to colour up and rise yet again. There was going to be a very narrow window of opportunity to get one; I was up for it though!

I would have liked a nice deep slack, but the middle Welland is not that sort of river, so I settled for a steady glide with just the tips of the summer bulrushes giving themselves away as they dithered in the flow. The Welland does not normally have much natural flow, but there was no lack of it today! 

Mixed Menu
I had a variety of deadbaits with me to try. I would cut them into sections, starting with very tiny pieces and trying bigger pieces up to an inch long later. I can’t think of a type of deadbait that I haven’t caught chub on, so I had a variety of samples. On a normal session I would probably just have one or two different baits with me but on this session, for illustration purposes, I had herring, mackerel, smelt, sandeel and lamprey.

Smelly Red Feed
Under normal circumstances, I would fish blindly by casting a bait into a likely looking chub swim, but the increased flow and coloured water didn’t make the swims too obvious. For this reason I decided to feed groundbait to try and bring chub upstream to my bait. My groundbait mix was simply a bag of Dynamite Red Crumb - a good general-purpose groundbait that I use more as a carrier and feeding stimulator than a feed. Just to make it really attractive to predators I added in a small amount of Dynamite Scent Trail Killer Fish Liquid Attractant. Be warned, it has a really strong pong!

As I had decided to start with a small piece of sandeel on the hook, I cut up another couple of sandeels into very tiny pieces and mixed them in with the groundbait. All the juices from the sandeel bag were also poured into the mix, which had been made very sloppily so that it dispersed in the flow easily.

Simple setup
My tackle and rig was exactly as I would use when fishing conventionally, so that I could quite easily chop and change between ‘normal’ baits and fish baits, if I so wished. I used a 1lb-test-curve specialist quiver-tip rod and a fixed-spool reel loaded with 5lb mono. Using the popular four-turn water knot, I added a 6in dropper to an 18in hooklength – both being made from the main-line mono. I started on a size 10 hook because I was going to start with a small bait, but if the chub start to feed quite boldly I would often go up to an 8 or even a 6. To the dropper I added 2SSG weights, and to prevent them from sliding off too easily I created a knot with a simple loop.

Feed Lightly
I tried to gauge where a chub might be sheltering in the flow and cast a good way downstream, putting the rod in the rest. Some time before casting out, I had already spent a while feeding the swim with small but regular balls of my smelly groundbait, laced with tiny chunks of fish. I did so sparingly, though, until I had gained some idea of the chub’s reaction because I didn’t want to overfeed them.

An hour passed and I knew that it was going to be one of those days when my line was constantly being knocked by small pieces of weed coming down with the current. It had also become increasingly clear that the river had started to rise again. Incidentally, a useful tip is that if you leave the connecting four-turn water knot with quite a large tag, it tends to collect smaller pieces of weed before they slide down your line and mask the bait.

That’s no chub!
As I was beginning to think that I would have to abandon the swim, a couple of telltale knocks, quite uncharacteristic of a chub bite, saw me strike into what was obviously a fish. Feeling very smug and thinking that I had cracked it, I guided the hard-fighting fish up towards the net, only to find that it carried on running upstream against the flow. Something didn’t seem right, and then it jumped out of the water, giving itself away as a lovely, well-conditioned brown trout of a couple of pounds. It wasn’t the fish that I was after, but nevertheless just as interesting. Trout, like chub, are another part-time predator with very similar habits.

I just didn’t feel that it was working in the swim and, rather than flog it all day, I decided to move downstream to see if any chub had picked up the scent of my bait, which must have reached that far because the flow was quite strong. Another hour passed and nothing happened, so I knew that it would be best to move well downstream and well ahead of the new surge of water.

Swim switch
The water a couple of miles downstream was slightly coloured from the last flood, but it had not received the latest deluge. With just two hours of daylight remaining I baited a likely looking steady glide that, although only two feet deep, had dense vegetation along both banks, where chub would find plenty of cover in between feeding spells. I baited the swim in a similar manner but this time I mixed a fresh batch of groundbait with the juice from a bag of Dynamite herrings. Running out of time, I decided to use small pieces of herring in the mix and a chunk of about an inch long on the hook. Having caught chub accidentally when pike fishing using 6ins chunks of half mackerel, to use a bait of this size didn’t seem at all unreasonable.

Keep watching
The steadier flow made it more predictable regarding where my groundbait would be travelling, and easier to position my hook bait to take full advantage. Nothing happened for an hour, but by constantly scanning the swim I am pretty sure I saw giveaway swirls in the current that, to my mind, were feeding chub. Whether my feed had stimulated them or whether they were feeding naturally, I couldn’t say. By keeping an eye on the swim in this way, and detecting those little things, it brings the confidence to persevere and think more about the fishing, rather than just sitting back and waiting.

You can never be sure of the nature of any swim. Sometimes chub will take up preferred feeding positions, but you can easily miss them and find that your bait is lying among an area of weed or silt, which they do not favour. I rather fancied that there were chub in the swim, but the lack of bites suggested that my bait was in the wrong spot. This was reinforced when I spotted potential chub swirls nearer to the far bank.

The witching hour
Time was moving fast but I was still optimistic and all fired up because the last hour of daylight in winter can often be the very best time to fish for chub. I wasn’t completely surprised when the tip started to move. In slow motion, it gave two gentle taps and a steady pull, which brought the tip round an inch or so. As I latched into the fish, within a few seconds the black tip of a chub’s tail showed in the shallow water, and I knew that I was so close to accomplishing my challenge. One thing I have found when netting a special fish is that you must concentrate fully on getting it into the net before punching the air in jubilation. So many times I have seen an angler celebrating before the fish is in the net, only to find it drops off at the last second. Indeed, it has happened to me once or twice.

Gently does it
As the fish approached the net, I could see the size 10 hook was barely holding in the lip, and the piece of herring was still flapping about on the line. It was a modest-sized chub of just a couple of pounds. At that moment it meant the world to me to get it into the net and conclude a day that had pushed me hard, not so much physically, but mentally. If it dropped off, then it was likely that the day had been wasted.

Thankfully it didn’t. As I dragged the net and fish back over the dense, decaying winter vegetation, and with the mud and water very close to the top of my wellies, I felt that warm glow that only anglers know that comes with a special fish in the net.

I stayed for an hour into darkness, which is often well worth the effort but with no further luck. I went home feeling very pleased with myself, though.