Top winter fishing tips for chub

CHUB are a favourite winter quarry, and more so when the really cold weather has settled in, and clear, low water can make other species switch off.

Chub will feed in the coloured water after a flood, but they do not generally like the thick heavy water that barbel go mad for!

Angler’s Mail magazine contributor Pete Reading (pictured above) supplied the following winter fishing tips to improve your catches of chub…

BEST BAITS

Bread hook bait
When there is just a tinge of colour, big chub are lovers of bread flake or crust hook baits, either trotted or fished with a cage feeder full of liquidised bread.

Bread groundbait
Mashed bread, simply made by soaking a cut loaf, is the best feed for use when trotting for chub, and a day roving around and float fishing flake in all the likely glides can build up a big bag of fish.

Maggots
The coldest of winter conditions, which can make fishing difficult for most species, maggots become the supreme chub bait, and trotting maggot on light tackle is a delight.

Feeder fishing can also be deadly, with the biggest of chub falling to maggots on fine line and small hooks.

Great alternative baits

Chub will take a whole range of baits when on the feed in warmer conditions during winter and cheesepaste, meat in all its forms, boilies and pastes, and good old lobworms can be great baits.

I have had good results with sweetcorn too, even in the colder weather.

Peeled prawns are becoming more popular for chub, and I am certain they would be a great bait for trotting with, as well as presenting on a light leger in chub holes.

WORK THE SWIM

Even in winter, chub will shoal up under the cover of overhanging trees and textbook snaggy swims, but careful loose feeding will draw them out.

Constant feeding is essential to build up a swim, and it can pay to baitdrop or catapult a lot of bait to begin with, without fishing, in order to work the fish up into a confident feeding mode.

Taking a fish too early can spook the others, so it pays to feed them up until they are in competition with each other.

FAVOURITE FEEDER

I love feeder fishing for chub, building a swim by steady feeding, and fooling fish with very short hook lengths, although a standard six inch hook length and double maggot on a 16 is always a good starting point. A single maggot on a 20 and a hook length of less than an inch may be needed for more cagey fish.