Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
The tasty bait that no chub can resist
When it comes to targeting chub at this time of year, there’s only one hookbait for reigning Drennan Cup Champion Dai Gribble
WHEN it comes to cheese paste, every serious chub angler has their own version – a clandestine, bespoke mix that they have total confidence in. But why use cheese paste in the first place? Surely for a creature like the chub, a meat or fish-based paste would be a better choice? After all, cheese is not a product they encounter naturally. However, just as casters seem to have the ability to single out a larger stamp of silverfish, so cheese paste often pulls out the bigger chub. “As it is dairy-based, it’s probably the milk proteins in the paste that turns them on,” said seasoned specimen angler and reigning Drennan Cup champion Dai Gribble. “Cheese paste is also water-soluble, so you are able to use the flow to your advantage, sending a powerful flavour trail downstream. “Thirdly, and most importantly, chub really like the taste of cheese for some reason!” To find out how Dai makes and fishes with this chub-bait extraordinaire, we joined the 53-yearold Stafford rod on the banks of a Lymm Angling-controlled stretche of the upper middle River Severn, near Telford.
It’s all a bit cheesy
When it comes to their taste in food, chub are one of the most ‘catholic’ fish swimming in British waters. If it can fit into their cavernous mouth, they will have a go at eating it! Fish fry, slugs, sweetcorn, pellets, luncheon meat, boilies, bread, maggots… the list is endless. But it is cheese paste that these greedy creatures adore above and beyond all other baits. “I don’t know who the first angler was to target chub using cheese, but it clearly works extremely well,” added Dai. “Yet, bizzarely, a lot of anglers are nervous about using it.” Dai believes that one of the main reasons for this is that paste can change its consistency during the day, depending on the temperature.
When you take it out of the fridge at the start of the day it will be firm, but after a few hours on the bank it could have softened considerably. “This shouldn’t be a reason to avoid using it,” Dai added. “There are plenty of little tricks to get around this, and it’s actually a highlyversatile bait and one that should be in every chub angler’s armoury.”
The secret recipe…
When making his cheesepaste, Dai keeps things simple, using a three-part recipe with the addition of a glug to finish things off. The first part comprises 8oz of finely-grated frozen pastry, to which is added equal amounts of blue cheese (Danish or Stilton) and a strong, hard cheese (such as Cheddar). “I mix all three equally, forming the finished product into a smooth paste,” he explained. “The pastry enables the completed bait to remain fairly soft and water-soluble. The blue cheese element adds the big punch of the flavour, while the hard cheese is a bulking agent.” To solve the problem of it going too soft on the bank, Dai takes a small amount of fresh liquidised bread crumb along with him. Adding this enables him to stiffen the mix again.
“I also add a tablespoon of Sonubaits’ Hemp and Cheesy Garlic Liquid Enhancer. This adds extra flavour and helps to give a much smoother consistency to the finished product,” he told us.
How to mount the paste
When it comes to fishing with cheesepaste, Dai uses three ways to mount it, depending upon how soft it is. The first is to mould a large grapesized chunk around a size 6 hook. When doing so, always ensure that the hookpoint is left exposed, so that you get good hook-ups. If the paste has gone a little too soft or, conversely, is a touch on the stiff side, making it difficult to pull the hook through on the strike, you can mould the paste around a hair-rigged Korum Paste Cage. The final way of mounting the hookbait is ideal for when the paste has gone very soft or if you’re fishing into faster water. In this instance, Dai will squeeze on a lump of breadflake, and then smear the paste around the shank of the hook. “This ‘open cheese sandwich’ gives me the best of both worlds,” said Dai. “It’s a little heavier for longer casting, plus the soft paste has an anchor point. Using crust instead of breadflake can also make the presentation critically balanced.”
Fishing with paste
Dai favours using a free-running rig set-up, and will swap between a small bomb and a number of swan shot, depending upon the speed of the flow he is faced with. What he is aiming to achieve is to cast further out than he wants to fish, and slightly downstream. If the leger weight is correct, the rig should move and swing round in the flow until it comes to a natural resting point. “It is a real balancing act getting this part right,” Dai explained. “You need enough weight to prevent the rig from swinging straight around in a few seconds, but not too much weight so that it refuses to actually move at all!” Dai carries a number of different quivertips with him, ranging from oz to 2oz, to enable him to fine tune his approach even further. “Chub can be very cautious, and if you use too stiff a quivertip, they will feel the resistance and reject the bait. Conversely, too light and the flow will bend the tip too far around, once again causing resistance on the take,” he continued. Roving between swims plays a key part in Dai’s chub fishing success, and it is often the case that effort very much equals reward. In the past, Dai has fished as many as 16 swims in a session, with only one fish to show for it come the end of the day..... but it was very big! “Good swim choice is something that comes with experience really,” Dai explained. “Some swims are limited in size, perhaps with a small overhanging bush as the only feature, making it obvious where any chub might be lying up. A spot like this might only require five or 10 minutes of fishing to get a result, whereas a larger swim with much more cover for the fish to hide away in could well warrant fishing for up to 30 minutes or more.” As well as covering as much water as possible in a typical session, Dai will also try to tilt the odds further in his favour by walking the stretch prior to starting fishing and prebaiting a few spots, before targeting them in rotation. There are few certainties in angling, but when it comes to chub fishing, one thing is for sure. If there is a wily old fish lurking in the gnarly sunken roots of that overhanging tree you just flicked your rig under, it shouldn’t take too long before the tip is pulling round if you’ve got cheesepaste on the hook!