Welchy’s Rig Secrets – 2. The Chub Maggot Feeder

2. The Chub Maggot Feeder

Chub are the ultimate omnivores, they will eat just about anything, but the one bait which stands head and shoulders above all of the others is the humble maggot.

Providing you have a little time, and indeed patience, to feed a swim then there is no chub that swims which you will not catch as they just cannot help themselves and rather like a kid in a sweetshop no matter how much they know they shouldn’t they just can’t help themselves – and once they start they just cannot stop.

Spraying maggots and trotting over the top is one way to take advantage of this greed and it works both shallow, under a waggler, or deeper, under a stick float, Avon or loafer but for me the ‘clinical’ and efficient way to trap them is with the maggot feeder.

Unlike barbel, which will usually stay well back from a feeder and wait for the feed to be carried downstream to them, the greed of the chub is such that once the feed has been established they will be on the feeder as soon as it splashes down, looking to get at the maggots as quickly as possible. This results in a lot of bangs and knocks on the tip as the fish knock and quite literally pick up the feeder to get to the maggots as quickly as possible; often resulting in missed ‘bites’.

To nail the fish effectively you need to employ very fine tackle and very short hooklengths with a size 18 or 20 hook to an inch or two of 2lb line about right for the big, wary fish I tend to chase.

The problem with such tackle is that such a short hooklength in close proximity to the feeder can result in line breaks and hook pulls and it is none too easy playing a big Chevin safely when your feeder is bumping against its lips throughout the fight.

To overcome this I devised the following rig which allows you to fish a ‘standard’ length hooklength but presented in such a way that your hookbait sits perfectly on top of the feeder as if there was no hooklength at all and yet as soon as the fish is hooked the full hooklength comes into play.

The Enterprise Tackle range of maggots are the perfect hookbait as they eliminate the possibility of small fish pecking away at the bait and indeed hooking themselves, although I’m sure a big chub would take a minnow anchored to the top of a maggot feeder it’s not ideal! A rubber grub keeps it neat and sweet.

Here’s how to make it:

Step 1. The first step is simply to shave a cork plug so it fits tightly inside one of the holes in your choice of maggot feeder.	Step 2. Once you have the fit push the plug into one of the holes – opposite the weighted side so it will always sit on top of the feeder – and cut a slice through the plug into which you can then insert your baited hook.	Step 3. The finished rig looks like this.	Step 4. I tend to fish red maggots if the water is clear and white maggots if there is a bit of colour to it but I’ve experimented with fluorescent grubs too and they work every bit as well, and may indeed offer an edge at times.	Step 5. This final shot, against a white background, shows exactly how the finished rig looks and how the hooklength should be set.