Par-Cooked Chub

Decided on an early morning start to avoid the day time heat. As somebody who doesn't like the heat, five  o'clock in the morning is remarkably pleasant. I headed for one of the deeper swims hoping the fish would be gathered in the cooler water. The water near the surface felt decidedly warm when I stuck my hand in.

 








Fishing an 8 No.4 stick float and maggots I was quickly into small chub, taking 6 in as many casts before a jack grabbed one and ripped it off the hook. I gave it another few trots through before moving to the next swim. This eventually produced a dozen or so rather small gudgeon before everything went quiet. It was nice to see the gudgeon. at last. The third swim, which was slightly deeper was another slow starter, but started to produce the odd small chub after a while. Though it produced steadily for about an hour, eventually I'd had twenty chub when a little jack appeared grabbing the tale of a chub. The next two swims produced nothing, not even a chewed maggot.

 








By now it was starting to get rather warm as the sun appeared over the top of the bank. The next swim was one of the fester shallower ones, about three foot deep.I bunched the shot up just above the hook length and had a few trots through picking up a couple of small chub. They were both astonishingly warm. So I avoided the next few swims as they were all shallow and had a go in the next couple of deeper 7-8' swims, but nothing showed in these. Along with the fact I was near the path back to the car, I took this to be a hint and packed up.

The difference in the temperature of the fish I caught was quite remarkable. Those from the shallow water felt like they were well on their way to being cooked. Not good at all. I'm also surprised at the lack of roach and perch.

There's also a new contender for the unstoppable beasties that myself and others have hooked. Somebody had a small catfish out of the river a couple of days ago.