THE CHUB & CHUB FISHING 



LEUCISCUS CEPHALUS 

 German, Der Dibel; French, La Chevanne, Dobule; North English, Skellie 



By R. B. MARSTON 



I HE chub, called also cheven and chavender in the old angling 

 books, is a handsome fish, and a great point in his favour is 

 that, although an exceedingly shy fish, in the warm months he 

 rises very freely at flies both large and small — I have taken 

 chub up to five pounds on a small black gnat or other small 

 trout fly as well as on big black and red Palmers. The fat, 

 heavy fly, often sold as a " chub fly," is not nearly so good as one made 

 on a longshank light wire eyed mayfly hook with a good red or coch-y- 

 bondhu hackle, or a black hackle — ^with a small tag of yellow wash-leather 

 or yellow silk. I always fish for chub with a light split -cane fly -rod of ten 

 feet and under six ounces in weight, both in fly fishing and float fishing, 

 and with fine undrawn gut — in fact the same cast that I use in mayfly 

 fishing where the trout run up to, and over, two pounds. 



Anglers who catch a large dace or a small chub are sometimes in doubt 

 as to which species the fish belongs to; but it is quite easy to distinguish 

 them if you remember that the anal fin of the chub is convex and that of 

 the dace concave. Colours and shades of colours vary so much among 

 fish of the same species that colour is not a safe thing to judge by, but 

 in the case of the chub there is one characteristic colour by which I have 

 nearly always been able to pick out the chub, even when but a few inches 

 in length from among the shoal of dace and roach, and that is the dark 

 blue -black tail. In chub over two pounds it is not quite so marked, but 

 it is safe to say that if you see a fish which looks as though his tail had been 

 dipped in blue -black ink you may be sure it is a chub — his thick white 

 lower lip is another mark of the chub. By looking carefully for the black 

 tail and white lip I have many a time saved myself the disappointment 

 in the mayfly season of fishing for a rising chub in a trout stream when 

 I wanted trout and the chub were hardly recovered from spawning. I 

 have frequently seen chub spawning in April and the early part of May 

 in trout streams; a favourite place is the mouth of a small stream, which 

 joins the main river, quietly spreading out over soft sandy ground into 



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