Chub are an interesting species aren’t they? Looking back over recent years I’ve probably spent more time chubbing than anything else. The reason is quite simple, there are just so many nice ways to go about catching them. Out of necessity, in recent years my chub fishing has been dictated more by when I can go fishing than anything else, and I guess I won’t be alone in this. 

Ninety-percent of my chub fishing takes place after August and in the dark – the one exception to this in recent years has been a few hours snatched during the annual family holiday, which just happens to always find us in a campsite close to the Dorset Stour! Now I love spending a few hours out on a wet and windy night, but this is not the easiest time to fish a maggot feeder and, in my experience, rarely the most successful method. So here is the other side of the coin if you like, the baits and methods I employ in my search for nocturnal chub come summer or winter.

Eel nightmare!
Maggots and casters are great for daytime chub fishing. It is possible to get chub worked up into a total frenzy using maggots and casters mixed with hemp, but if you intend to night fish forget it! As the sun sets millions of tiny, ravenous, serpentine mouths leave their daytime haunts and make life hell for the maggot angler. Bootlace eels, don’t you just love them! On rivers like the Ribble the little devils even make daytime fishing difficult as they home in almost instantly on a bunch of maggots. You can’t even feed the buggers off as these pencil thin pests can easily demolish a gallon of bait. Don’t get me wrong; I am quite happy catching big eels, but bootlaces – yuck! 

For some reason maggots lose their effectiveness as the light level drops. I don’t know why this should be, but friends fishing rivers where there is less of an eel problem have also found this to be the case. Most now fish maggot feeder in daylight before switching to the other baits I will describe after dark, On rivers as diverse as the Avon, Kennet, Suffolk Stour and Ribble the pattern is repeated.

Eel proof?
Whilst barbel fishing the Kennet in the late eighties I caught a lot of fish on sweetcorn, and very rarely saw another angler using it. This was a particular stretch of river where the fish had been hammered for several years, yet sweetcorn seems to have gone completely out of fashion. Corn served me well for several years. It takes a flavour and colour so easily that it would still be the top of the list, except that I happened to chance across a friend using something a little bit special.

Everyone seems to use them now, but six years ago fish pellets had been pretty much forgotten as a river bait. Their instant and sustained effect on the highly pressured chub and barbel of the River Ribble had to be seen to be believed though. For a few months catching those fish became child’s-play, catches of half a dozen chub in an hour or two after dark became common with most fish around the five-pound mark. Here seemed to be the bait that we were looking for.

Why eels don’t eat pellets I really cannot say for any certainty. It has been speculated that the processing of the fishmeal and fish oil in the pellets makes it unpalatable to the incredibly sensitive palate of the eel. This would explain why halibut pellets, which are made from higher quality raw materials than trout pellets do pick up one or two eels each year. A plausible enough explanation, and I must admit, that as long as I continue not to catch eels using these baits I am quite happy to not worry too much about exactly why this should be. I do actually have some pellets specifically designed for feeding eels, that I am told are far more palatable than anything else produced. It will be interesting indeed come summer to see if they really do like these pellets in the wild. My heart says that these pellets should make an excellent bait, but I am bracing myself for another all out eel attack!

250 varieties
The company I buy most of my pellets from list something like 250 different variations on the theme. All of them will catch fish, but some are much better than others. A lot of pellets have a high fat content, often in the region of 25% of their weight is fat. These high fat pellets are generally referred to as grower pellets, as they are designed to get the fish to put on weight as fast as possible. I prefer the lower fat brood stock feeds. These have a fat content of around 15% with about 50% protein. These pellets are designed to keep the brood fish in good condition, without getting too flabby. 

Although high fat baits do seem to have a limited attractive life in the spring and summer when the water temperature is rising, the lower fat, high protein pellets work for much longer. Fish eat more of the low fat pellets, fat being a natural feed suppressant and also tasting pretty foul. 

Obviously, the average bag of pellets in your local tackle shop is unlikely to give you any idea about the make-up of pellets. As a very rough and ready rule of thumb, the darker the pellet the higher the fat content, signs of oil on the bag also indicates a high fat content. Although I did experiment with them, I very rarely use salmon pellets now. I have a strong suspicion that these are too rich for coarse fish and do not make a good long term bait.

Any halibut in the Thames?
Whilst you might not catch many halibut around our coasts these days we are fortunate that in many parts of Europe these huge fish are farmed for the table. Being primarily piscivorous, halibut are very picky eaters and so feed manufacturers have been forced to develop very high quality feeds for these fish. From an angling point of view this means that halibut pellets make one hell of a bait! 

I see a lot of anglers using very large single halibut pellets, often measuring 15 or even 20mm in diameter. I generally use the smallest bait that I can drill and hair-rig. Using a tiny drill bit I can make a clean hole in pellets down to 8mm quite easily and fish these in multiples of twos or threes. Which reminds me; always keep your pellets in a sealed bag, as they don’t last long in an open bag. If the pellets start to get difficult to drill then you know that they are starting to dry out and are likely to become less effective.

Confidence building
Good quality pellets work from the off for both chub and barbel. Many times the first pellet that the fish have tasted has been the one with the hook in it, not a good way to educate them! Yet, there is no doubt that good pellets get better with some pre-baiting. I tend to use pellets just like any other bait, introducing a pouchful every few minutes, or in deeper water a droppers-worth every half hour. 

One thing to bear in mind is that some pellets only just sink and may get washed out of the swim if you aren’t careful. If you do find yourself using these pellets then a small PVA bag tied to the lead gets the pellets exactly where you want them. I find this is a method I am using almost all the time now. You would be amazed at the difference just half a dozen pellets around the hook can make to your catches.

The rivers I fish are too far from home for me to be able to pre-bait them, but what I always try to do is introduce a few pouchfuls of bait at the end of every session. You don’t need a lot of bait either as, unlike carp fishing, you will rarely come across anybody else putting bait in, even though it is written about often enough. 

Mersey Tunnel
With a mouth the size of the Mersey Tunnel, you would be forgiven to thinking that chub would be partial to a bit of bait, but this can be far from the truth and it can take real effort to get chub into a feeding mood. The trouble is, chub tend to move off with baits in their lips when they are not feeding comfortably. Most of us have experienced those huge rod-bending bites that seem impossible to miss yet time after time you strike into thin air. This situation is particularly common when using hair-rigged baits, with even the fish you hit often being hooked right on the edge of their lips. 

The answer though is generally pretty simple. The key word is confidence. Get those chub feeding confidently and they will wolf the baits back before moving off. Getting the fish feeding confidently takes time. Time that is without a hook bait in the swim. Here I go along whole-heartedly with the maggot bashers, get them feeding and make them catchable. Because the baits I use are targeted towards chub and barbel I can pre-bait with them confident that my target fish will get most of it. This is a major advantage, as I have no doubt that the more bait fish see (and the more regular they see it) the more confidently they will feed. 

Whilst I often don’t have the time to feed a swim for hours before actually starting to fish, you can take a leaf out of the match angler’s book and fish two different areas of the swim. Whilst this might not be possible on small rivers, on the Severn or the Trent, why not put a bait down the near margin for a barbel whilst feeding further out for later? You won’t catch that many barbel by doing this, but each year you will get a few and it does mean that you are actually fishing whilst waiting for the chub to gain confidence.

Although pellets seem to work season after season, after all they are a tremendous food source for the fish, they do lose their effectiveness when the water temperature falls into single figures. This is certainly more noticeable in spate rivers, where dramatic temperature changes can occur. In Southern rivers the pellets continue to catch all winter, but only at this time of year another bait can run them close.

Cold fish
As winter draws on your choice of pellet becomes critical. High fat content baits made from poor quality ingredients definitely lose their attractiveness and eventually become useless. You can extend the winter usefulness of pellet baits by using the very best quality halibut pellets, but really you are on to a loser.

During the two seasons I spent fishing Lancashire’s River Ribble there was a very noticeable tail off in the effectiveness of pellets when the water temperature fell below 5 degrees centigrade. Below this temperature baiting with pellets was a real no-no, although the odd fish would still be caught on single hook baits. One little dodge that did prove effective was the use of a feeder filled with pellets, or pellet paste as this gave of some attraction without feeding the fish. 

There are just so many ways to catch chub that no one article can ever do the species justice. Already, during the short life of this great magazine, several different approaches have been discussed, all of which will catch you a lot of fish. The fun bit is finding out which one works best for you.

This article was first published in Coarse Angling Today January 2000