I’ve used peeled prawn ever since I left the RN back in Feb 1977 and got a temporary job working in a freezer company which stored them for various shops and I was allowed to take any packets that were damaged.
I found it best to steer clear of the cheaper prawns which seem to have their colour and taste boiled out of them, and stick to the decent quality ones which had plenty of colour and taste.
As far as I know I was the only one using them at that time as I never read or heard of anyone else using them back in those days (other than the odd salmon angler who used them with their shells still on); and the Chub were suicidal on most days that I used them on the river Kennet near Reading, the rivers Avon and Stour in Hampshire and the river Lee in Hertfordshire, I normally touch legered and the bites were quite savage almost wrenching the rod out of my hand sometimes.
One day I remember stopping off at Dobbs Weir with an old B.James & Son MK IV Carp rod and a Mitchell 300 reel loaded with 6lb line and a half oz link leger and a size 6 Specialist hook and a bag of decent quality peeled prawns. Every swim around the weir was full, and no one was catching much at all in the bright sunshine, so I waded out in a large gap between two swims where the old sunken barge used to be and dropped a prawn close to the sunken barge and within seconds my rod was taking on a nice bend and I had 4 or 5 decent sized Chub within the next half an hour.
The two guys either side of me wandered up to find out what I was using and I shared a few of my peeled prawns with them, and they too started to catch a few Chub within a very short time.
That’s how good peeled prawns used to be but these days if the fish have probably seen them and been caught on them before it’s possible that they might not be such a good bait nowerdays.
These days I’m usually fishing for Barbel and fishing different stretches of river, and not specifically for Chub, and I very rarely use prawns these days, in fact I usually use a longish hair to purposely prevent hooking Chub when I’m legering for Barbel (and this works for me).
This is how I hooked my prawns when I used to fish for Chub a lot back in the late 70’s.
I’ve also had Tench and Perch on peeled prawns.
Keith
