BIG FISH COLUMN: Slight improvement in local rivers

After an unexpectedly slow start, the local rivers, as predicted, showed a slight improvement last week with both barbel and chub responding more positively now the initial rush to the banks has eased slightly.

That said the local picture mirrors that of the country as a whole which has seen a generally poor opening fortnight.

Chub often seem very much the poor relations at this time of year when they are invariably out of shape and generally regarded as a second best by barbel anglers who capture them instead of their intended quarry. It is true that a July barbel is only a shadow of what it will be in February, but summer chubbing can be great fun and tactics such as floating crust, small lures, floatfished minnows and freelined slugs are very entertaining.

Just as entertaining, but far more ruthless in terms of catching efficiency, is the waggler and sprayed maggot and at this time of year when the chub can still be holding in large shoals it is a devastating tactic and one employed to great effect by Andy Reid last week who put together a net of fish which will be difficult to better this term.

Andy had spotted a large shoal of chub holding station on a local beat of the Loddon during a fish spotting walk and returned the following day armed with a large bucket of red maggots and a float rod.

The art of successful wag and mag fishing for chub is to build up total confidence in the fish before casting at them and this can sometimes take a long time, commonly from 30 to 90 minutes, but I've spent hours at it in the past! It's important to get right though as it makes the difference between blanking, or at best catching one or two fish, to catching the entire shoal!

Andy started off by spraying a single pouch of maggots to the far bank and watched as they fell through the water as they flowed down towards the spot where the chub were shoaled. There was just a single chub visible and he appeared disinterested in the grubs falling through the water column around him but a second pouchful aroused his interest and by pouch four he was waiting for them and had been joined by two others.

Given enough maggots and enough time you can catch any chub that swims and after an hour Andy had the chub fighting one another in their efforts to get to the maggots first. As soon as the grubs hit the surface the water literally boiled with frenzied chub - it was time to fish.

Andy set up a simple 4BB waggler set just a foot deep with a single red maggot on a size 18 hook straight through to 3.6lb line. He sprayed a pouchful of maggots, cast and hooked the first fish within seconds. With the shoal in a feeding frenzy they took no notice of their hooked shoalmate and continued feeding as Andy netted the fish, rebaited and hooked up a second.

Inevitably as you plunder the shoal the fishing gets trickier as the numbers of fish diminish and the odd hook pull tends to alert the suspicions of the fish too, but it's usually possible to make major inroads before the fish twig that something is up. Even then by scaling down and baiting steadily you can usually bag a couple more fish and on a couple of occasions I've done the clean sweep and had the whole shoal.

Andy didn't quite manage the lot but after four hours of fishing he had netted 18 chub and although he only weighed the two which looked to be the largest, at 5lb 6oz and 5lb 4oz, he estimated half of them were around the 4lb mark or larger.

Exceptional fishing at a tricky time of year and proof that there are fish out there to be caught at present if you go about it the right way.

Any anglers wishing to report catches may contact me on 07780 755138. I may be e-mailed on ian@bigfishtrail.com