| MARK WINTLE |
| Mark Wintle, an angler for thirty-five years, is on a quest to discover and bring to you the magic of fishing. Previously heavily involved with match fishing he now fishes for the sheer fun of it. With an open and enquiring mind, each week Mark will bring to you articles on fishing different rivers, different methods and what makes rivers, and occasionally stillwaters, tick. Add to this a mixed bag of articles on catching big fish; tackle design, angling politics and a few surprises. Are you stuck in a rut fishing the same swim every week? Do you dare to try something different and see a whole new world of angling open up? Yes? Then read Mark Wintle’s regular column. |
| RIVER CHUB ON FLOATFISHED PELLET Two years ago, I did an article about catching Throop chub on stick float and caster. At the time, it was a successful method but I was also pondering on whether I could make floatfished pellet work on the river for chub.
Casters remain excellent bait yet they have two disadvantages; their cost and the difficulty in keeping them fresh for any length of time. I have a bait fridge, and I have used old casters successfully for chub and barbel, but pellets are much easier to store, and far cheaper. I starting using pellet as feed on carp match lakes twenty years ago, and I was far from the first to realise their potential as bait. In more recent years we have moved on from pastes made from pellets (still effective) first to banded pellet and more recently to specially treated expander, ‘hookable’ pellets, that even come ready flavoured. Throop has seen mass baiting in the past, hence the hemp ban of the late sixties, and my way of thinking that has evolved over the last two years is that with so many pellets being introduced, whether by hand, feeder, PVA bag or bait-dropper, is that the chub have no difficulty in recognising them as food. This is true of many of the more heavily fished stretches of Stour and Avon in the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Ringwood areas. I have contributed in this in my own small way, using 3mm pellets mixed in with hemp and caster when feeder fishing for barbel from 1999 onwards. I have also fed pellet when fishing with casters on the float for chub since that time. When I first tried pellets on the hook for chub two years ago, it was obvious that all was not quite right. I recognised that to fish with 6mm pellets on the hook I needed to step up in hook size to at least a No. 16, and better still, a 14. These hook sizes are better matched to line around four pounds breaking strain. My first attempt to catch chub was in a fast shallow swim on a stretch just above Throop. I could see two chub feeding avidly on the pellets I threw in but fooling them to take the bait was far more difficult. The rapid sink rate of the hook pellets made it harder to make my bait match the loose feed. By experimenting with shotting, I eventually nobbled them, and then moved on to Throop to catch another pair of chub on the same method. All four chub were in the range 21/2 lbs to 31/2 lbs. At that time there were few types of ready prepared expanded pellets available, and I used the Mosella Manic pellets in 6mm that had been successful for one of the Ringwood lake’s carp, tench and crucians (brown goldfish/hybrids). I couldn’t help thinking that this was part of the problem. These pellets were too hard for the chub. I needed softer pellets to fool the chub, and would have to tolerate the bites from chublets, dace and roach. Fast forward a year I probably did too little chub fishing last season, something I am going to rectify this season given the size of chub in my local rivers, but I did try pellets on the float again, this time on a stretch near Longham. I had previously failed with pellet here but now realise that the swim I tried simply didn’t have enough chub in it. There is no doubt that having chub compete for your bait makes things easier. Once I had realised this I moved to a better swim, and using a softer type of 4mm pellet, did catch a couple of 21/2 lb chub. Though I didn’t realise it at the time another piece of the jigsaw was in place. In mid July, I took a walk down Throop on a bright sunny morning. The drought is starting to bite deep with the two side sills of the New Weir already bone dry. Wisely, Head bailiff Chris Allport has concentrated on cutting small swims here and there so that, although at first glance the river looks unfishable, there are plenty of places to tuck into, and more importantly the level of the water is kept as high as possible in difficult circumstances.
Despite the weed, I did see plenty of big chub including some real whackers – enough to whet my appetite. The fish were well distributed and I’m sure that for every fish that I did see there were twenty that melted away before I got to them or were simply hidden by the weed. I decided that an evening session offered the best prospects, and after a blisteringly hot day and armed with a good selection of pellets, found a fast mid-river glide that had several chub milling around even before I starting catapulting in some 6mm pellets. I’m usually too impatient to start fishing but this time I bided my time. Before long there were eight chub competing for the pellets. Most looked around four pounds though there was one big one. With a twenty-yard cast to make, I tackled up a Normark Specimen Match rod with a Shimano Stradic reel loaded with 4lb line. (No centrepin this week, though I must try it again). A short 21/2 AAA peacock waggler with the weight bulked around the float and a size 14 Drennan Feeder hook completed the set-up. I quickly got into a rhythm of feeding then casting but although the chub continued to take the pellets it was obvious that the one on the hook did not fool them. I did get a couple of roach, dace and small chublets. The angler at the next swim down came to have a look. He was fishing a 14mm halibut pellet on the bottom in a deeper, slower swim hoping for a barbel, feeding with PVA bags of pellet attached to the lead, but had yet to get a fish though he was getting signs of activity with line bites. He suggested that I wade out to get above the swim and get into stick float range. With nothing to lose, I pulled up my waders and got into the cool river. At this point, I was still fishing with a waggler set-up. Then I had a flash of inspiration. I changed the hook-link to 4lbs Vanish fluorocarbon. Within half a dozen casts, I got my first chub, a short stocky fish of 4  When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission, which supports our community.
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