18/12/2013 - Pallatrax Cheese Feast

The weather forecast for the next couple of weeks is for lots of rain which always put a smile on my face as it’s so much easier to find the fish. It’s time to think chub, big chub probably my favourite fish after big roach. One bait I have found successful over the past sixty odd years has been cheese paste. In clear cold water my first bait would be crust often lightly smeared with soft smelly cheese or today sausage sizzle. But when the rivers are high and coloured then, it’s a large piece of cheese paste often the size of a bantams egg on a size 4 Pallatrax barbless hook. Many anglers have told me chub don’t feed in coloured water, Don’t you believe it.

 I have found Pallatrax cheese feast an ideal bait and very convenient in its nice size pots, but in its present form it’s too firm unless you’re going to hair rig the bait, which means you will miss a lot of chub takes. Hair rigging a bait is one of the most inefficient ways of trying to catch chub. Unlike carp and barbel which usually shovel the bait in their mouths, the chub will most often pick it up delicately with its lips. What you need is a soft cheese paste, I empty a pot of cheese feast into a small bowl then give it thirty seconds in the microwave. It then gets broken into pieces before being placed in a food processor where is gets whizzed around until its large crumb size.

 A pot of cheese feast glug is put into the microwave for half a minutes so it’s nice and runny, having started the food processor I slowly add the glug with a spoonful of cooking oil until I end up with a soft paste. Don’t worry about it being too soft, it will stiffen slightly in the lower temperature at the waterside. The beauty of cheese paste is, it can be put in the freezer on your return from a fishing trip. Back in September I made up about 20lbs of soft cheese feast, which is then split into cricket size balls and put in separate plastic bags until needed, I hope this helps you catch your next big chub.

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