First fish of the year (Twenty13).

With the thaw on I decided on a trip to the river this afternoon  in an attempt to beat the snow-melt. I had been thinking about chubbing for a while, and though the water was a little clearer than first thought it would make  a change from watching two of Wak Lite's famous poly balls not doing a lot.

The first bend below the mill looked quite good today.  I caught my first ever Norfolk chub from this bend, on a wild windy and wet afternoon on meat when it was not easy discerning the savage pull round on the gale lashed (screw-in) Drennan quiver.tip. Remember those? At 4.12 seemingly massive compared to the Suffolk Stour/Essex Colne chub I'd cut my teeth on before leaving Devil Dog land in the early 90's. Dog walked with no cover so pencilled it in for the last spot on the way back to the car. Someone fishing below so probably had been through anyway so dropped in just below the bridge.

Tried liquidised bread in a cage feeder with good old frozen pastry cheese paste, didn't realise feeders had built in lead strips so not as effective as I had hoped as I couldn't get them to swing in with the flow and were a bit solidly placed for upstream drop-backs. Will try again with no lead on the feeder and use a couple of swan on the link so it can swing into place.

Getting gloomy and colder now and at last broke out the pike rods as I wasn't happy with the feeder approach. Around half four a sardine tail fished  over to that seemingly featureless far bank in about 3 feet of water was away. Usually the fish show on the strike due to the shallow water and it was obviously a double.
Once in the slightly deeper main channel began to bore away and feeling heavy. Just how heavy was apparent at the net and it was a struggle to get it up on the snowy bank. Hooked just in the scissors.

Not sure if it had a recent meal or was starting to build up spawn but that is an impressive pot. My previous best, also from this stretch was 23lb and this had to be bigger.

It certainly was, and I settled for 25lb 2oz. Beautiful hen fish, with no otter damage, unusual on this stretch. An absolute belter. And Col U won 2-0!