Mark Swaby
Senior Member
Mike, i would suspect that some gets absorbed into the body and after some time (dependent on water temp) and possibly a month in winter, they revert back to their body shape and its excreted.Back in the 90's, i baited a stretch of the river Colne at Denham with a john baker bait for two weeks.On my first cast i had a bite which resulted in a chub that should have been about 1 1/4lb it was possibly 3lb.I called my mate up to see the 'deformed chub' he started laughing and realised straight away that the fish had eaten all of my free bait over the past 2 weeks.I wish i had taken a photo it looked like a goldfish and a very fat one at that,over 150% plus weight gain in 2 weeks.I caught that fish again about a month later and it was still fat but probably 1 3/4lb.