Chub

[Simon King]

Hi Simon.

The poor cold weather leading up to these catches apparently meant that these Chub were a little down on their end of season weights.

That 7.14 Chub was surprisingly hollow in the belly, that could be why I had problems initially to hold it, the belly was trying to poor through my hands so to speak.

A few more of those Teme Severn pellets would of helped the weight gains.

I'm sure I remember reading that Terry Lampard reckons Chub are at their "peak" weight around September/October?

All I can say is that the 7.15 I had the previous season (September) came out at 8lb and a 1/2oz this season (February)? The year before it was caught at 7.14 (February)............ I know the other two captors and their weighing was accurate.

Out of interest, this fish came out of the same swim twice and once a couple of swims downstream over a 3 year period. Big Chub are very much creatures of a "home" stretch on this basis I think.

I'm not sure there's an awful lot of difference in weight loss/gain during those winter months. Unlike Barbel which (it seems) can fluctuate from week to week depending on the weather.

 

[Phil Smith]

Simon -
that fish lives a mile away, he only came into that swim three times and got caught each visit. ??

 

[Simon King]

Outside of spawning, Phil; how much travelling do you think chub do? I'm not sure it's more than a few hundred yards at most?

 

[Colin Gordon]

Simon, I've always found this area of the chub's behaviour very subjective to the individual river (even the stretch) and its subsequent habitat provided to the fish.

On stretches of river where good cover is to be found and also reasonable flow rate and resulting food carrying through the chub's haunt, big chub will be exceptionally territorial in such circumstances.
Remove such cover etc from the river and the chub will become very nomadic, bigger the fish, the more nomadic they become.

Regards the time of year chub reach their optimal, again a very subjective area and again subjective to each river and also each years weather patterns.
On rivers like the Thames which have huge hatches of fry then a long drawn out summer would result in peak weight being achieved (during the fishing season) about October.
Rivers like the Cherwell or Wey that don't have masses of fry in the margins. These fish I have found attain their peak weights slowly and IMO are at their top weight (normally) around the end of season.