The Salmon Alternative By Nick Fisher

THE river Wye is world famous for its salmon. But its chub are a well-kept secret. Good salmon rivers are often great chub rivers. Chub are happy to dip in and out of the fast riffles, then glide moodily through huge swirling back-eddies to hunt for food.

And chub aren’t fussy. They’ll slurp insects and flies off the surface. They’ll hoover nymphs and aquatic larvae from mid-water. And if times are tough and nose-bags hard to come by, the chub is not above sinking his snout down to the bed of the river to grobble around with the best of the bottom-feeders.

Chub are survivors. Even on mighty rivers like the Wye which can swell to several times its height and width, in a powerful flood, chub can somehow still find a toe-hold and cling to a station, until the worst of the big waters are past.

Floods that sweep away trees and fences, flushing silver fish like dace way down into the estuary and out to sea, still don’t seem to be tough enough to spell the end for the tenacious chub. Some of the biggest recorded chub around the country have come from salmon rivers. The record chub used to be held by the River Annan in Scotland. Itself a keen sea trout and salmon river experiencing big scouring floods in winter and sometimes low, treacherous water in summer. Traditionally salmon anglers haven’t liked chub. Traditionally, salmon anglers haven’t liked any fish apart from salmon. So, any chub which was stupid enough to get caught by most salmon anglers was likely to meet a sticky end.

‘A few years ago I regularly saw chub of six or seven pounds just lying on the bank, or chucked in a hedge’ hotelier Peter Smith, a keen Wye watcher once told me. ‘One time I found five chub between five and eight pounds neatly laid out in a line on the grass bank of a salmon pool. They were arranged perfectly in size order. Dead. Left to rot in the sun. That’s how little regard the salmon angler had for this fine fish.’

Chub came a cropper regularly at the hands of the salmon angler because of their puppy dog enthusiasm. A chub is game for anything. Throw it a stick and it’ll come bounding back all saliva and scales, then drop it happily at your feet, begging for another big toss. Well, OK... I’m over stating their playfulness, but a chub will give you a tug on your string for practically any small reward.

Because they are so omnivorous, it makes them great survivors in times of hardship. It also makes them fairly easy to catch. Except of course when you really want to catch one. In theory though, a chub will take a spinner, a plug, a fly, a worm, bread flake, bread paste, cheese, slugs, snails, dead baits, live baits, maggots, casters, sweet corn, dog biscuits or chick peas. Show a chub lunch, and he’ll show it a good time.

In a way, chub and salmon make perfect bedfellows. The salmon, all moody sulky and anorexic. Refusing to eat anything. While the chub’s all spunky and greedy, slobbering great chunks of lunch down his front and then trotting up for seconds. Like Jack and Mrs Spratt. Together they lick the platter clean.

Thing is, there ain’t no salmon. Well not to write home about. The Wye has been knocked all out of shape in recent years. The salmon are struggling like they never have before. On the once prolific stretch of the Wye I visited recently, the bailiff told me that so far this year he’d only seen two salmon. And neither of them were caught. This is a river which once heaved with huge silver-sided Atlantic beauties.

The Wye is in trouble. Big trouble. But, there are serious steps afoot to try and redress the situation. The Wye Foundation are battling to put things right for this great river. Meanwhile, what about the chub?

Coarse fish, and indeed coarse fishermen have gone through quite an image-change in recent years. They are no longer regarded with quite the snobby contempt that old style salmon anglers held for them. Their bait methods are no longer seen as quite so unsporting. And in many ways, the first noises of change came from the river Wye, when it first got barbel.

Barbel were introduced to the Wye illegally. No one really knows by whom or why they were released. First, the presence of barbel gave the salmon anglers something to complain about. It must be the barbel that were to blame for the drop in salmon numbers. All the barbel must be eating the salmon eggs and fry. They were killing the newborns before they were able to grow and grow, and migrate and spawn.

Soon, the writing was on the wall, and salmon folk could see that barbel or no barbel, the Wye’s problems were bigger than these bottom feeding buggers. And, ironically, the arrival of keen barbel anglers to the Wye beats, men willing to pay good money just to catch and release these pest fish, was the saving of many of the local businesses.

Hotels and pubs and shops and restaurants which were seeing a dramatic decline in trade because of the poor salmon fishing, could now ply their custom to the new breed of fishermen, barbel men.

‘Ask a lot of the publicans and hoteliers and they’ll tell you they actually prefer the barbel boys’ explained Peter Smith. ‘They spend more money, are less demanding, easier to get on with. And don’t moan half as much, because they’re happy... they can actually catch the fish they set out to catch.’

So, the barbel saved the bacon of some of the businesses on the upper Wye. At a time when foot and mouth threatened to wipe out many small tourism-dependent outfits, it gave a ray of hope. Maybe the chub can do the same to some of the lower Wye beats too.

So many salmon beats are simply unused now because the chances of actually hooking up to something silver have become too slim even for the outrageous optimism of salmon anglers. Yet these beats still have bailiffs and ghillies employed to look after the river. Wouldn’t it make more sense to open them up for a few dedicated chub anglers?

If it’s a question of money, I don’t think there’s too much of a problem. Chub men aren’t the mean-spirited, flat-cap wearing, roll-up smoking misery-guts, some game anglers assume them to be. Quite the opposite. Anyone who is serious about the quality of their fishing who is prepared to drive hundreds of miles to stay for days in the hope of catching a fish of their dreams, isn’t going to baulk at even the meaty price of a day-ticket.

Maybe it’s time more game angler-only rivers relaxed their restrictions and breathed a bit of life back into their banks.