photo 1
In short I’m going to echo what John Bailey wrote in his blog post last week on ‘The Springtime River.’ Whenever you have any spare time get down to your local river and see what’s happening. I’m not fortunate enough to have much trout water on my doorstep and, with work commitments, traveling for short sessions is not an option.

This time of year however, for me, can be as exciting as the time spent fishing the rivers when they are open to do so as there is so much life around – new life, old life and the wise life of the big old Chub that I will be trying to outwit this coming opening season.photo 2

I will spend hours on the river bank, watching and learning this closed season.  So far since the 15th of March I have gone through countless loafs of bread and equally as many pairs of dirty-kneed trousers crawling the banks staying out of sight of  said Chub.

In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned the importance of taking the time at the end of the closed season to see what has changed. I recently found a huge tree which has come down in the river and created some wonderful rafts for which Chub and  Barbel love to hole up, safe in the knowledge they are not easily spotted by predators from above.

I have found a shoal of what look to be big Chub. Big by the River Arrow and my standards anyway!  They are also incredibly nervy. Over the last few weeks I have been attempting to build up their trust and have managed, on occasion, to get them confidently taking bread flake off the top.

The plan is to simply keep them fed up on the bread and in turn have them taking bread without a second thought. Come the first day of the season it will be a one fish hit and run tactic. With the carnage it will cause I can’t see many of them hanging around and falling for the same trick twice, not on the same day at least.

Watch this space……

Image credits: Tom Norris