Preparing my cheese paste hook bait.

Friday 18th October.

I'll be off to fish the River Cherwell on Sunday so tonight I've decided to prepare some hook bait to use that will hopefully encourage the chub to feed. The temperature is beginning to drop outside now and it's this time of year that normally sees chub fishing at its best. 

I'll be making my own cheese paste and this is how I'll make it:

Ingredients;

1 x pack of shortcrust pastry


1 x pack of Red Leicester cheese (approx 200g)

1 x pack of Stilton (approx 200g)

Salt

Method:

Grate the Red Leicester and set aside. Crumble the Stilton as small as you can with your hands and put into a mixing bowl. Take the shortcrust pastry out of the packet and with the Red Leicester, add to the Stilton in the mixing bowl (if you leave it all out of the fridge and allow to reach room temperature it will make the whole process easier). Now it's all in the mixing bowl, add a good pinch of salt and mix together with your hands. Knead it thoroughly for around 5 minutes or so until you have an orangey consistency to your paste. It should look like this:

This is far more than you will need for a single session so you can split this up and freeze what you don't take with you (take any you freeze out of the freezer the night before your next session). I have sectioned mine into four (slightly larger than tennis balls) as I'll probably have a mate joining me on Sunday so will need a little extra. I would say you could probably split your paste into five or six and they should still give you enough for decent length sessions.

The consistency of the paste is fairly soft at the moment but once its cooled in the fridge and a low temperature is maintained on the river bank it will stiffen up and stay on the hook nicely.

Look out for my next blog to see how I get on.........