G
Graham Marsden (ACA)
Guest
I don’t make any bones about it, I was green with envy. It was a fish I’d dearly love to catch myself and came close to it with a 5lb 15oz fish about four years ago from the same stretch. I was barbel fishing at the time and although that took the shine off it, the pleasing thing was that the 5.15 fish was the first clue we’d had that chub of such stature existed in the stretch. I remember discussing it with Gary and deciding that we should target the stretch for chub in the winter.
Sadly, I fell out with that part of the Dove when it became overrun with anglers who would cut their granny’s throat for a big barbel, and when I began to recognise almost every fish I caught. I moved to the upper Trent and I’ve never been back. Though I will soon, I hope, but not to fish for barbel, at least not along that stretch.
But Gary made a wise decision and occasionally targeted that part of the Dove for chub. We made tentative arrangements several times to fish it together but for one reason or another never made it. When he phoned me with news of his 6.5 I was blown away, both envious and excited at the same time. I couldn’t even bring myself to take the p*ss out of him properly I was so in awe of the fish.
It isn’t the first time I’ve heard of 6-pounders being caught from the Dove, but it’s the first time someone I know well has caught one, and also photographed it very clearly. In all the years I’ve fished the Dove the biggest chub I’ve seen was my own 5.15 fish, so to say sixes are pretty rare is one very extreme understatement. As Gary says, bigger chub may have been caught, but if those who have caught them are choosing to keep it quiet then as far as I’m concerned, they haven’t caught them. It’s so easy to claim the most outrageous things in all walks of life if you’re not prepared to publish the evidence.
Gary’s 6.5 chub really is a very significant fish that only regular Dove anglers with a penchant for honesty and an accurate set of scales will realise.
Sadly, I fell out with that part of the Dove when it became overrun with anglers who would cut their granny’s throat for a big barbel, and when I began to recognise almost every fish I caught. I moved to the upper Trent and I’ve never been back. Though I will soon, I hope, but not to fish for barbel, at least not along that stretch.
But Gary made a wise decision and occasionally targeted that part of the Dove for chub. We made tentative arrangements several times to fish it together but for one reason or another never made it. When he phoned me with news of his 6.5 I was blown away, both envious and excited at the same time. I couldn’t even bring myself to take the p*ss out of him properly I was so in awe of the fish.
It isn’t the first time I’ve heard of 6-pounders being caught from the Dove, but it’s the first time someone I know well has caught one, and also photographed it very clearly. In all the years I’ve fished the Dove the biggest chub I’ve seen was my own 5.15 fish, so to say sixes are pretty rare is one very extreme understatement. As Gary says, bigger chub may have been caught, but if those who have caught them are choosing to keep it quiet then as far as I’m concerned, they haven’t caught them. It’s so easy to claim the most outrageous things in all walks of life if you’re not prepared to publish the evidence.
Gary’s 6.5 chub really is a very significant fish that only regular Dove anglers with a penchant for honesty and an accurate set of scales will realise.
