River Chub Brace

I recently captured my best-ever chub brace, landing this 5lb 2oz specimen (left), followed by a 4lb 8oz fish while I was setting up my camera!   I risked life & limb to land the latter fish, because I was fishing a peg with a very steep - almost vertical - bank leading down to the water.  I wanted to rest the chub in my landing net, in the margins, but as this wasn't possible where I was fishing, I took the net and fish a couple of swims downstream where the margins were shallow and calm. 

As I was setting up the self-timer function on my camera, the alarm on my other rod screamed!  I was left to battle the fish in a deep, fast-water peg with no landing net!  Standing between me and the net were 3 trees, overhanging the water.  There was no way over or around them, so I had to (in the dark), scale the steep bank, test the margin depth with my toe whilst holding onto a tree with one hand and the rod in the other.  Luckily there was a narrow, rocky ledge about a foot under the water, so I slowly shuffled along this, negotiated the trees and a reedbed and finally reached an area I knew was shallow, where I jumped in feet-first and managed to reach my net!  It's a good job it wasn't a barbel or I may have been waterskiing! 

I later went on to catch a barbel and another 4lb 8oz chub, all caught on a variety of pellets.

This brace of chub were 5lb 2oz (left) and 4lb 8oz (right)