Biggest chub of the season

The biggest chub of the season has been landed – a record shaking 8lb 9oz specimen from a club stretch of the Dorset Stour.
The monster fish fell to Robert Young, and set a Christchurch AC record for the species as well as being a personal best for the Bournemouth computer engineer.
In fact it fell just 1oz short of the chub record for the river as a whole, and is just 12oz behind Andy Maker’s official British chub record.
Thinking outside the box paid off for Rob, who targeted an area avoided by most other anglers. He took the fish on a hair-rigged JH Baits Nuti-B boilie to a size 8 Drennan Super Specialist Barbel hook.
He said: “I walk the stretches more than I fish them and I feed the odd swim in advance, so I know where the fish will be.
“I try to avoid areas or parts of swims that other anglers frequent, and I fish as light as possible using just a 1oz lead so it just about holds on a gravel bottom and a short 8ins mono hooklength of 6lb.
“On this occasion I fed a few broken boilies in the morning before fishing in the afternoon, recasting every hour with a fresh PVA bag of broken boilies, but I had to wait a few hours before I got the indication,” he said.
The catch follows a 7lb 7oz chub landed by the 54-year-old just two days before using the same tactics, and he also hit the headlines last November when he bagged two huge chub weighing 8lb 4oz 8dr and 7lb 10oz from the same waterway.
His latest catch will be one he will never forget: “When I first hooked it I thought it was a barbel, as it felt really heavy and anchored itself in mid-river.
“When I saw it in the net I was shocked – it was like a carp. My head was still spinning when I got home. I just can’t believe it,” Rob said.