Step-by-step - How to make the perfect cheesepaste for chub
Flavoured cheesepaste is a Paul Garner favourite
IF YOU want to blow away the Christmas cobwebs and enjoy some brilliant sport this week, dust off your quivertip rod and head to your nearest river in search of chub.
Provided the water isn’t bankhigh the chub will be feeding, especially early and late in the day, making this a fantastic way to get out and explore your local river.
You need a minimal amount of gear and bait for this style of fishing. A few SSG shot and light bombs, a packet of size 8 hooks and a lump of cheesepaste and you’re ready to go. You could use breadflake, boilies or meat on the hook, but a smelly lump of cheesepaste is the ideal attractor bait. Use just a thumbnail-sized piece on the hook and no free offerings, spending just 10 to 20 minutes in each spot searching out every nook and cranny.
Every chub angler worth their salt will have their own cheesepaste recipe, but as long as the bait is of the right consistency and has a strong smell I don’t think you’ll go far wrong.
There has been a lot of debate over the years about why cheesepaste should be such a good chub bait. Many argue that it’s the strong smell, but I think there is more to it than just that.
Several super-keen chub anglers that I know swear by milk protein-based paste baits, made using highly-refined high-protein milk powders. Of course, cheese is made from milk that has been partially digested by adding mould, so there is some similarity between cheesepaste and those high-protein concoctions.
CONSISTENCY IS KEY
Consistency is key when it comes to cheese paste. When the water is icy-cold you need a bait that
remains pliable and is easily struck off the hook, yet which will not break-up too quickly. You can’t achieve this by using cheese on its own, so a carrier of some sort is needed.
The simplest carrier is white bread crumbs, produced by liquidising a few slices of bread. The doughy texture blends well with the cheese, but can go quite hard in cold water.
A better alternative is to use ready-made pastry mix. Buy this as a powder that you mix with water, or ready-made in frozen blocks. Both work, but I prefer to mix my own, as this allows me to get the consistency just right.
WHAT CHEESE?
Veiny blue cheeses that smell like old socks are excellent chub attractors. Even when mixed 50-50 with pastry the smell is still very strong, and gets even better the longer you leave it. Any veiny cheese will do, but I prefer the softer varieties, which help to keep the paste nice and soft.
A lot of anglers use a mix of both hard and soft cheeses in their paste, but it is worth remembering that the hard cheese will stiffen up the bait and not add greatly to the smell, so I tend to use the harder varieties in moderation.
A very smelly cheese, with a very high salt content, is parmesan. I buy this hard cheese ready-grated and add it quite sparingly to boost the pong-factor even more.
For a smoother paste add a small amount of margarine or butter to the mixture – a teaspoonful is enough. Any oil or fat will do, but I tend to use hemp oil, which has an attractive nutty taste.
CUSTOM ADDITIVES
Bog-standard cheesepaste will catch an awful lot of chub, but there is always the temptation to tinker with it, and a great many additives do work well in paste.
A tiny amount of garlic paste can be added to the mix if you want to produce a really anti-social bait. Garlic is a very good attractor, but very easily overdone, so go easy on the amount you use.
Squid powder might sound like a strange additive, but chub do love the stuff and just half a teaspoonful added to a pound of cheesepaste will give it a boost.
Some anglers swear by sweet additives, with banana milkshake and brown sugar among ingredients on the ‘secret’ list.
As long as you are not adding ingredients that will spoil, you can make a ball of cheesepaste now, bag it up and – as long as it is stored in a cool place – use it until the end of the season.
The mould will continue to go to work on the milk proteins in the cheese, and even if the surface becomes a bit furry the paste will still work wonders.
Cheesepaste is not only very effective, but very convenient too, so why not give it a go?
QUICK & EASY PASTE
IF YOU are short on time, or decide on an impromptu chubbing session, a very effective cheesy paste can be made using cheese spread mixed with bread flake. I remove the crusts from a slice of medium white bread and cover one side with a thin layer of cheese spread. Fold the bread in half, mould a piece around the hook and you have a smelly bait that chub adore. Why not try some prawn-flavoured cheese spread?