On Sunday evening the missus came upstairs to find me sitting on the bed attempting to measuring the length and girth of my chub. I will explain......
James and I have been on mission to catch a chub weighing 5 pounds or more. Over the winter between us we have had many a fine chub which we have thoroughly enjoyed catching - however non have broke the 5lb barrier. Perhaps this is due to the method that we use, or the tiny nature of the rivers that we fish. Nevertheless i am still determined to catch a 5lb chub from one of my favourite small rivers.
Saturday saw me embarking on another chubbing trip to small Nottinghamshire river where i am was sure big chub reside - although never fished my dad always recites "there were always some big lads in there when i fished it as a kid" whenever i mention chub. Armed with a bait that i'm not entirely confident in (cheese paste), i will share my secret and cheap recipe later, i started to fish. In sheffield it seems almost impossible to get hold of lobworms, Im not sure why as they are my favourite bait, especially for winter chub. To me it seems obvious that a chub would evolve to smell a lobworm or a slug much more strongly than modern crafted baits seeing as these are the natural baits high in protein that fish have been presented with for millions of years.
In the absence of worms cheese paste is high on my list for winter chub, and im sure many a good fish has been landed on the stuff and on Saturday i landed my best chub to date on it. A good sized fish and i was sure that it was very close to, if not 5lb. Its sods law that the day that i fish without scales is the day that i catch one that i would like to weigh. I sent a picture of the fish to James, and without hesitating he said "to tell you the truth i think its 4-14 or 4-15". Regardless of the weight I was happy with this fish.
James and I have been on mission to catch a chub weighing 5 pounds or more. Over the winter between us we have had many a fine chub which we have thoroughly enjoyed catching - however non have broke the 5lb barrier. Perhaps this is due to the method that we use, or the tiny nature of the rivers that we fish. Nevertheless i am still determined to catch a 5lb chub from one of my favourite small rivers.
Saturday saw me embarking on another chubbing trip to small Nottinghamshire river where i am was sure big chub reside - although never fished my dad always recites "there were always some big lads in there when i fished it as a kid" whenever i mention chub. Armed with a bait that i'm not entirely confident in (cheese paste), i will share my secret and cheap recipe later, i started to fish. In sheffield it seems almost impossible to get hold of lobworms, Im not sure why as they are my favourite bait, especially for winter chub. To me it seems obvious that a chub would evolve to smell a lobworm or a slug much more strongly than modern crafted baits seeing as these are the natural baits high in protein that fish have been presented with for millions of years.
In the absence of worms cheese paste is high on my list for winter chub, and im sure many a good fish has been landed on the stuff and on Saturday i landed my best chub to date on it. A good sized fish and i was sure that it was very close to, if not 5lb. Its sods law that the day that i fish without scales is the day that i catch one that i would like to weigh. I sent a picture of the fish to James, and without hesitating he said "to tell you the truth i think its 4-14 or 4-15". Regardless of the weight I was happy with this fish.
I began to think how could I estimate the weight of this fish from the picture, luckily I had put my rod in the picture for scale and I could therefor work out the dimensions of the fish. A quick goodle search brought me across this table published by the chub study group, which roughly calculates the weight of your fish based on length and girth (which is impossible to estimate from a 2D image) measurements.
My real spool measures 5.5cm, which means I can calculate the length of my fish at 19 inches in and 14 inches in girth, assuming the fish was flat (as it is on the 2D image) this would make the fish 4lb 13 oz (a cracking fish in my book). To make the fish more than 5lbs the curvature of the fish's body must add an extra 0.5 inch onto the girth, which i am quite sure would be the case (considering the fish was broad across the shoulders and was far from flat).
I will leave you guys to make up your mind about whether this fish was 5 pounds or not! we will never know exactly how big it was. Below is a happy angler, looking not so happy taking a picture on a self timer.
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| A smaller Fish Caught on the Same Day |
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