DID I HOOK THE SUPERCHUB? I’LL NEVER KNOW...
The giant fish eluded us for hours... and then I hooked a monster
AFRIEND of mine, Mem ‘Jardine’ Hassan, had a ticket for a stretch of the Hampshire Avon that was only ever fished by salmon anglers. Jardine was keen to catch an Avon salmon, but the days of the big spring fish were over and the only real opportunities lay in the summer, when the grilse were running. This, of course, meant that he often packed a barbel or chub rod when he went salmon fishing; as he was searching for the ‘silver tourists’, he would often stumble on a shoal of ‘natives’. And one July day he stumbled on a fish so big that he thought his eyes must be deceiving him. But he wasn’t seeing things. I’m certain of that because I saw the monster too.
We had been half-heartedly looking for a salmon during the early morning, but there wasn’t a sign of even a small grilse in all the usual holding pools. There was a wide stretch of shallows that ran suddenly into a deeper narrower glide and we knew from previous experience that a shoal of barbel would be waiting for us there. So we put away our salmon gear, tackled up our proper rods and sneaked into position through the willow herb. We began feeding maggots into the swim and Jardine peered through the cover to see if we were attracting anything. I tossed in another handful upstream of him and as the maggots sank something emerged from the weedbeds.
“Blimming heck!” gasped Jardine, and he turned to me with his jaw dropped and his eyes toggled.
“What is it?” I whispered, not being able to see clearly through the undergrowth. Jardine crawled of the hole he’d made in the willow herb and said: “Have a look for yourself. You won’t believe it!”
I inched forward until I had a clear view into the swim, put on my polarising glasses, blinked and said: “It must be a carp! No, it looks like a bass! No, it’s a clonking great chub!”
Now I have seen a couple of very big chub before, even if the biggest I’ve caught was ‘only’ 5½lb. I reckon, in the distant past, that I must have seen a sevenpounder, but this Avon fish was much, much bigger. Both Jardine and I reckon it must have been almost 30 inches long and would have weighed 10lb easily. It was definitely picking off one or two maggots as they drifted past and we got a clearer idea of its dimensions when it was suddenly joined by several barbel that looked in the 6lb to 7lb category. The chub dwarfed them all!
Unlike the graceful quick finned barbel, the monster seemed cumbersome, even awkward in its movements. It looked an ancient specimen and the large scales had a rough-edged, slightly irregular appearance. It dropped lower in
the water, as if dragged down by its great weight.
We both crawled away out of sight and Jardine feverishly set up float tackle while I tossed in a few more maggots. Then he cast from a few yards upstream and we honestly thought he was going to hook the chub straight away. It was such a unexpected surprise, in such an accessible spot that it surely meant that our luck was in and we were destined to break the record. But of course Jardine didn’t hook the chub. The first fish he caught was one of the barbel, a six-pounder that seemed awfully small compared to the giant. He graciously let me have a cast and a bit of trundled luncheon meat produced an instant lunging take. “Is it him?” asked Jardine. “No,” I said, seeing the streamlined form of a barbel spearing itself into the weed. It was the one we thought had weighed about 7lb – and we were, after a bit of a tussle, proved almost right: 6lb 14oz.
Naturally, after that the chub disappeared and we didn’t see it again. But we guessed it hadn’t gone far into the dense weedbeds and continued fishing, hopefully, for the rest of the day. The barbel were in an eager frame of mind and we caught seven by sunset on maggots, meat and sweetcorn. Every time one of the rods bent into a fish our hearts skipped a few beats with the thought that, this time, it might be superchub; but it never was. However, just as the light was fading in the west, I hooked a big fish after dropping a bait right across the river into a narrow gap in the weeds.
It ploughed off downstream and eventually came to an unbudgeable stop. I tried every trick in the book to shift it, but finally the hook sprang free. It just might have been…
THE continuing hot spell isn’t conducive to some common lake tactics.
Fishing shallow on commercials, though, is a very reliable route to getting a few bites when carp are cruising around close to the surface and enjoying a bit of sun.
On the face of it, shallow fishing seems straightforward but, as with any style of fishing, there are little tweaks to get the most out of your day, from changing depth, varying the amount you feed and even trying to catch carp without feeding anything at all.
West Midlands matchman Peter Black knows a thing or two about shallow fishing as he won the £50,000 Fish O’Mania XXV Final by doing exactly that with pellets at Hayfield Lakes.
Still basking in his win, we caught up with the Fosters tackle shop worker to get the lowdown on his special shallow approach…
THE CORRECT DEPTH “This all depends on what type of fish you are after. Carp feed at different depths to F1s and tend to be around 18ins to 2ft under the surface, whereas F1s feed shallower, as little as 8ins or 10ins at times.
“These would be my starting depths if fishery rules allow.
“I’ll come shallower if I am missing bites or getting line bites that tell me that the fish have come further up in the water.
“On the flipside, it can pay to have a rig set up to fish 3ft-4ft deep on lakes with over 12ft of water. The fish may be sitting deeper than you’d expect.”
THE RIGHT RIG “You don’t need heavy floats to fish shallow. I try and go as light as I can get away with, relevant to the conditions.
“My shallow rigs use floats between 4x12 and 4x8 and I’d almost always fish the lighter end of this range. Two floats cover most of my summer shallow fishing, the Preston Innovations Des Shipp Shallow for carp – which has a bristle to let me fish slightly deeper – and a Drennan Crystal Dibber for F1s.
“Mainline is always 0.18mm in diameter as it doesn’t tangle and, to me, it doesn’t make any difference to how well I catch, but hooklink diameter and length
will vary. For carp I use an 8ins hooklength of 0.16mm with the shot underneath the float, while for F1s, that’s 0.13mm or 0.12mm at 4ins long with the shot placed just above the hooklink. Hook choice is a Guru LWG in sizes 18 and 20 for F1s, or an MWG size 16 for out and out carp fishing.”
SLAPPING AND TAPPING “In addition to feeding from feeding, you can use other ways to get the fish competing. One involves slapping and tapping.
“Carp and F1s respond to noise created on the surface and if I’m fishing for carp I’ll loosefeed and then slap the float and hookbait hard on the surface afterwards to create a second splash.
“If F1s are the target, slapping is good but I’d focus on tapping, which involves feeding and then splashing the tip of the pole on the water quickly for a few seconds.
“Often the pole will hoop over as a fish takes the bait!”