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Missed bites

M

Michael Radford

Senior Member
Help please. Just had a week at bewdley and caught some nice fish 10lb 4oz barbel pb and 5lb 12oz chub pb so very happy my problem is the amount of missed bites. Most of the time I fished hair rigged meat or pellet on size 10or 12 hooks meat was punched 12mm x 20mm cylindrical, pellets 12and 14 mm.mostly with a ground bait feeder and 3ft tail. I had quite a lot of savage one hit bites whacking the rod round for no hooked fish the bait was usually intact is this common for the severn
 
Maybe the length of your hair (not on your head, before anyone starts down that road :D ) ...the longer the hair, the more missed-bite chub knocks you'll get.
 
Probably chub.

Try the meat directly on the hook and try scraping a flat side on two smaller pellets and gluing them together on as short a hair as you can manage.
 
Michael Radford said:
Help please. Just had a week at bewdley and caught some nice fish 10lb 4oz barble pb and 5lb 12oz chubb pb so very happy my problem is the amount of missed bites. Most of the time I fished hair rigged meat or pellet on size 10or 12 hooks meat was punched 12mm x 20mm cylindrical, pellets 12and 14 mm.mostly with a ground bait feeder and 3ft tail. I had quite a lot of savage one hit bites whacking the rod round for no hooked fish the bait was usually intact is this common for the severn
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I’d been getting this in the deep water at arley. I shortened my rig length down and that seemed to help. I put the meat straight on the hook as well.
 
Hi jon this was at arley too seems most people seem to think chub hairs were short hook touching bait wonder if they were hitting feeder.by the way does the deeper water fish at arley in the second field.
 
Michael Radford said:
Hi jon this was at arley too seems most people seem to think chub hairs were short hook touching bait wonder if they were hitting feeder.by the way does the deeper water fish at arley in the second field.
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Never had too much joy in it to be honest so haven’t really give it a proper go.
 
Could be liners or as most say Chub. On the lower where Chub are a real pain I use long hook lengths try stop hooking chub . After a bit you know when to strike or not. On heavily fished waters on the middle the barbel are not stupid so find right balance is right
 
Dean Aston said:
Could be liners or as most say Chub. On the lower where Chub are a real pain I use long hook lengths try stop hooking chub . After a bit you know when to strike or not. On heavily fished waters on the middle the barbel are not stupid so find right balance is right
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Thanks dean and all that have commented. As said before i am a beginner at barbel all the fish i have caught have self hooked on hairs thats how i was told to do it i am more used to bream on soft quivers not 1.75 tc do chub not self hook easily because it would be nice to connect occasionally on a slow day
 
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Michael Radford said:
Thanks dean and all that have commented. As said before i am a beginner at barbel all the fish i have caught have self hooked on hairs thats how i was told to do it i am more used to bream on soft quivers not 1.75 tc do chub not self hook easily because it would be nice to connect occasionally on a slow day
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Chub can drive you mad, they pick at, mouth at the bait, show it to their mates, and then reject it, or mostly just somehow take it from the hair if they really want it without any indication.
And then like the other evening they almost drag the rod in.
From what I know Chub are always wanting to be the first to check out some food, if it is moving they will grab at it because of their greedy nature.
 
I've started experimenting with a whittled down krill wafter and a 12mm krill boilie on the hair and the hook-ups for chub have improved. Still catch barbel on them too. I'm guessing that with it moving a bit more in the flow rather than hard on the bottom is more natural and their greedy nature overrides their caution? But they'll soon wise up.
I had exactly the same frustrations with chub. Some lads sit on their hands and put up with them twanging the rod tip, until the barbel move in.
Sometimes on short sessions I'll do the same, but if I'm fishing for a full day, I agree it's nice to be catching - you might spoil the chance of a big barbel, but if you're new then I suspect you just want to get stuck into a few.
The best bit of advice I was given when chub are active and you don't mind catching them is hold the rod and hit everything. You'll still miss a lot but you will definitely hook more .
 
Michael Radford said:
Thanks dean and all that have commented. As said before i am a beginner at barbel all the fish i have caught have self hooked on hairs thats how i was told to do it i am more used to bream on soft quivers not 1.75 tc do chub not self hook easily because it would be nice to connect occasionally on a slow day
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If you want to hook chub use a soft bait like breadflake or corn hooked directly not on a hair. If the chub want a soft bait they have to grip it tightly & by that time you should have struck. If chub are really cagey you also need to feed them line when they pick up the bait, but at times I find they can be almost unhookable.
 
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