Chub On HBC Original Flakey Pop-Ups...

01:57 Lewis Gaukrodger 0 Comments

Hottest day of the year so far and armed with a a packet of standard original flakeys and pop up flakeys I headed onto the small Lincolnshire waterway I had spent most of last summer targeting. With the polaroids helping me to peer beneath the streamer weed it didn't take long to locate a shoal of chub with a number of bigger fish holding off at the back of the swim. Gliding from under the weed to intercept free offerings I knew it would be a one cast swim to get it right without spooking them all.

Mounting up a pop up original flakey on the hair, with a size 10 mixer hook poised above it I cast the short length of fluro carbon to mono underneath the over hanging branches a meter or two upstream of the shoal. Instantly the chub rose and the chublets had a go at the 50p sized bait. The benefit of the flakeys is that if that had been bread crust they would have most likely dislodged it from the hook/hair or taken it under the surface where as the robust flakey just kept drifting in the current before one of the bigger fish at the rear of the shoal rose, mouthed the bait and turned setting the hook and causing chaos to unfold. With 9/10th of the river covered in weed with only the small strip of free water to trot the bait through the fish turned and set itself fast in the weed. Giving some slack it freed itself and I was apply pressure to lift it to the surface and bring it across the weed, its big white lips, gaping mouth and bronze flank were soon in the net. A few quick photographs and i was surprised how long this fish was, clearly spawned out it had the frame to be a very big fish come the back end of the season.





As I suspected it was a one cast swim and i tried for another 20 min to get another fish to take a bait though they were more than wary! A quick hour session and the first chub on the flakeys banked.