Memories of Chub and Prawns

[BoldBear]

Another recent post about using peeled prawns for Perch prompted me to remember when I first started using them for Chub 40 years ago after leaving the RN Fleet Air Arm and starting work in a large freezer food storage depot that stored them in 1977.

In those days no-one seemed to use them other than Salmon anglers.

 

I remember thinking that they would be a great Chub bait and decided to try them especially as I had a ready supply of them from the freezer depot I worked in.

 

I remember turning up on a sweltering hot afternoon at Dobbs Weir on the river Lea and finding every swim taken; I decided to wade in next to a sunken barge and caught 5 nice Chub in the first half hour on peeled prawn while everyone else was struggling to catch anything in the heat.

 

The guy to my right asked what bait I was using and I gave him a few of my prawns, and he too started to get Chub. That's how good the prawns were in the early days. The bites used to be violent too.

 

I also caught my first 5lb Chub from Kings Weir on peeled prawn in 1980.

 

Nowadays peeled prawns are a fairly common bait, and for other coarse fish like Perch, Tench and Carp too; and they no longer seem to be such a magic bait; but I still look back to when I first started using them for Chub 40 years ago.

 

The following diagram shows the way I preferred to hook them for Chub which always seemed to hook the Chub soundly in the corner or middle of its lower lip.

 

Tight lines

Keith (BoldBear)

[Kappa]

They are a funny bait.

 

On one water I fish in the summer the carp literally climb up the bank to find prawns but they ignore them in the summer. I've had then poking their noses out of the water trying to find them after I've poured the defrosted prawn water into the lake at my feet.

 

On another water I've fished for a few years I'd never caught or seen a tench using oelkts maggots corn etc. I fished one day with prawns and caught tench after tench on them.

 

One thing for sure they are a great bait!

 

Rich