One more cast

This post was really meant to be about a successful days Chub fishing. However the very last cast of the day completely altered the nature of both my days angling and the words you are now reading.

Armed to the teeth with red maggots and worms I appoached my local river and elected to fish my two favourite swims. After a couple of hours in each all I had to show for my efforts was a shiny Chub and a baby Trout smaller than my thumb.

Realising a change in tactics was required I opened my recently purchased worm pot. As I searched around the earth for a fat lobworm it became apparent that the pot was completely wormless and empty. I had been duped by my local tackle shop into buying a worm free pot. However I must shoulder some of the blame, I really should have checked the pot before leaving the shop. Buyer beware indeed.

Cursing my luck I packed up my kit and walked the river looking for a fishy swim. I paused over a quick glide that went from shallow to deep water. I decided to stop and catch some of the rivers elusive winter Grayling.

After a while I had my first bite and reeled in a friendly looking Roach. The next cast went unanswered but the following two brought in a brace of hungry Chub who regurgitated crushed up maggots into my net that I had been loose feeding into the swim for the last hour. More Chub followed, clearly I do not know what a Grayling swim looks like.

Content with a great days fishing and struggling with the fading light I opted for one final cast. My stick float trotted merrily down the flowing water and plunged under. I struck lightly and I felt something a little bigger tighten the line. After some quick negotiations with my captive I landed a fine 2lb Chub, my biggest to date.

At this point I should have packed up and gone home but a voice in my head encouraged me to make one final cast. The float skipped through the swim and disappeared from view at exactly the same spot where the last Chub had taken my bait. After I had made contact the fish executed a quick dash to the river bank. With a little bit of luck I succeeded in coaxing it away from it's intended safe haven and bring it slowly to the surface.

My jaw hit the floor, it was a massive Roach!

Reeling in, I carefully manoeuvred the Roach into my net and prayed that my barbless hook remained true. After some further work the silver giant was safely in my net. Pulling myself together I placed the ancient looking Roach into the weighing sling just as a passer by and his children popped over to see what all the noise was about. We all stared as the scales stopped just under 3lbs. Taking off the weight of the light mesh sling we estimated a final weight of between 2lb 12 oz - 2lb 13oz!

As I returned the venerable old Roach to the water, the greedy part of me wanted to make one more cast. Opposed to this the romantic part of me felt that it would somehow dishonour the memory of such a beautiful fish if I was to cast again. The romantic side of me won out and I happily walked to the car dreaming of monster Roach.