A nice day on the River (part 1 Chub)

Well what a nice day on the river . I was woke up by the kids at 7.30am and the first thing I did was to look outside it was a bit bleak . The weather had been milder than for the last 2 weeks but this had brought a touch of rain . I was unsure if it had put enough down to effect the river levels but with the coarse season on the rivers coming to an end I thought it would be worth a ride whatever .
I had text Phil but he was making an early start , he has the fly fishing bug , this is really good for me I have had the same bug for many years and I can see some good days over the next few months .
Saturday afternoon I mentioned going fishing too the Mrs she said ok dinner time would be good! so that put an early start out but at least I knew come dinner time I could be on the road .
It rained most of the morning and at one point I thought I may miss out completely .
So a bit late about 1pm off I went , just as a precaution my tip rod and a couple of feeders was took out but as always I hoped for conditions to allow me to use the center pin and float . The roads where clear and the trip took me 25 mins ,your first glimpse of the Dane is as you approach off the motorway bridge ''it looked spot on'' .
Making my way across the field I spoke to a fisherman coming off ''very quiet'' we had a quick chat and he had been fishing the pin with out a bite , after the Gowy last week I knew how he felt but a change to the tip had brought him a Barbel . This was encouraging if the Barbel are feeding then it's normally a good sign that the water temp is up a bit .
I now made my way to a spot at the far end of the club length . This area has brought me some good fish over the years but it's a bit of a tricky swim , not to fish but to get down to the water , it involves scaling down a wall a job that was very easy a few years ago but not so easy now ! Halfway down and I thought it was not such a good idea but seeing the slight ledge I was on was slippery going back up was out of the question as well ''I was stuck'' after what seemed an age I finally got down and started to fish .
When I arrive the first thing is to feed , this is before I set up my rod ,normally 5 mins of a steady trickle of bait , Maggots on this occasion , in the summer you get plagued by Minnows in all but the swiftest of swims , no such problems in the colder months . This steady feed gets the fish on the feed and I walk a bit upstream so they are going down into the area I know holds the fish , this carries on as I set my rod up and also I have another couple of minutes before I start to fish . I often feed while I'm playing a fish and after it's landed I rest the swim a little just feeding , on a mall river like the Dane I have found this is the best way especially with Chub which can be spooked .
On this occasion it worked, second run down and my float slipped away a nice 3lb Chub came to the net''good start'' , this continued several more around 2lb but also two over 4lb and a nice fat one which pushed just over 5lb (on my dodgy scales ) I lost a couple with hook pulls and I also lost a Barbell it looked around 5lb to 6lb it unfortunately found a snag my own fault took the pressure off a bad mistake on this little river . I finished with 11 Chub from the swim and decided a move was in order as the bites dried up .
Now getting up the wall , the better part of valor decided to wade down stream an option that could now be used as disturbing the swim didn't matter .
I had to make do with taking the photos my self my photographer had gone fly fishing , my next purchase will be a tripod , balancing the camera on my bag is not the best .