I was unable to fish yesterday as, on the previous day, my landing net handle broke while landing a 56cm Pike – more on that later on the Tackle page.
This gave me time to think about new fishing methods to try out on my favourite stretch of the Radbuza.
I already managed to hook and land a 45cm Chub using freelined bread despite one of the local Coypu community doing his level best to scoop up any bread that the fish were interested in – Coypu are cute, but a pain when fishing.
Any floating bread will be immediately attacked by hoards of fry, minnows, bleak etc. so thinking about the age old problem of keeping bread on the hook, a video from my favourite YouTube channel crossed my mind – in this video Chris, The Ginger Fisherman, was flyfishing his local river for Chub with a bread fly.
The Ginger Fisherman bread fly fishing for Chub
This guy is something of an expert when it comes to catching small-river Chub (amongst other things) and is an inspiration. I would highly recommend taking a look at his videos and subscribing to his channel: The Ginger Fisherman.
While I have no intentions of flyfishing (for now), I want to try out these bread flies on the Radbuza Chub.
So I’ve bought some bubble floats and ordered the bread flies and will try my float-fished dry fly method. Who knows how it will go.
A quick update on this method: this morning, 17th August 2023, I tested a setup using the ‘water bubble float’ with floating crust. I was using a size 6 wide gape micro barb hook tied directly to my braided mainline (I had to change rigs quickly while the fish were in my swim so didn’t have time to add a leader)
I can see the advantage of using these floats as they help with casting distance and accuracy. The result?
A 47cm Chub
I’m now looking forward to receiving the bread flies more than ever! But… on checking the order I see that they are coming from the UK and not, as I thought, from Germany and, since Brexit, ordering from the UK is a big no-no as it takes for ever to arrive and invariably involves a lot of customs paperwork.
Update 26 Aug. 2023 – still waiting for the bread flies. Ordering things from the UK is so frustrating!
Bread Flies
I can hardly believe it, but they arrived and without any of the usual post Brexit customs formalities.
I must say, they look excellent and now I’m looking forward to using them
Lately, however, the larger Chub have been absent from my stretch of river – probably due to the prolonged hot and dry spell we’ve been having. This has lead to low water levels and lower oxygen levels in the water.
The good news is that, yesterday, it rained all day and all night. Today, again, it’s been raining all day so I’m hoping that this will improve the situation and increase the likelihood of the big guys returning.
The river levels were a bit crazy in September 2023 changing from very low to very high depending on the weather. The Chub stayed away from my chosen swim.
The situation wasn’t improved when I caught the flu and had no energy for much fishing.
On the 17th September the water levels returned to normal and, despite my illness, I decided to go to the river for one last try before returning home.
I decided to take just one rod with me and, as it transpires, it was the wrong one.
The chub were back but I was so clumsy that I found it impossible to cast the fly and float rig out on my ultralight rod without tangling the braded line, contnuously, around both rod and reel.
Twice, when I managed to get the fly in the right place, the fish tried to take the float rather than the fly.
I gave up, packed up and we drove home.
I will revisit this idea and am determined to land at least one fish using this method.