Drennan’s Stewart Moss finally caught his dream fish this week – a 7lb+ Oxfordshire Chub from the Thames, after lots of hard effort applied over numerous Winter seasons.

Only fishing for a really big Chub an evening (sometimes two) per week after work from Christmas until the end of the season, he slipped his net under this 7lb 1oz example on Tuesday, with just two days of the season to spare!

Stew is passionate about fishing in Oxfordshire so wanted to catch his desired 7lb Chub from his home county, so had constantly resisted the temptation to fish for one in the Dorset Stour, Great Ouse or Lea. 

After a prolific Feb-March 2012 period that yielded 6 x 6lbers and 15 x 5lbers alone, he was hopeful that 2013 would finally produce him a ‘seven’. However, due to the dreadful flooding and high flow levels plus the poor weather conditions that have seemed a permanent fixture in Oxfordshire, this Winter had been an unprecedented disaster!  Very few Chub banked at all from just a handful of trips, all made in poor conditions.

With a bitter, piercing east wind and the river cold and coloured, Tuesday evening in the dark after work did not seem a particularly attractive proposition.  But all the hours of hard work and effort paid off when the only bite of the evening produced this magnificient pigeon-chested Chub in near perfect condition – a very clean fish indeed with immaculate scales and fins!

The big Chub took a 14mm CC Moore Meteor pop-up Boilie, wrapped in matching Meteor paste, and presented very tightly hair-rigged to the back of a size 10 Drennan Super Specialist Barbel hook.

”All the many hours of effort, lonely dark evenings, the miles of trudging river banks, the freezing cold hands and feet, the near misses and disappointments, all seem worth it now” a very satisfied Stewart said.

For full details on the Drennan Super Specialist Barbel hook click here: