THE BEST FISH YOU’VE LANDED THIS WEEK
“LIKE many anglers this season, I’ve kept an eye on many river level gauges, due to continual flooding. Noticing a slight drop on a tiny waterway, I decided to head out and give it a go. “On arrival, I found the river still lapping the banks, so I planned to hunt down slacks, undercuts and breaks in the flow, using one of my favourite little rods – an 8ft Darent Valley specialist quivertip.
“After fishing a number of swims, I had a good bite on a link-legered air-injected lobworm, resulting in a 6lb 3oz chub. I was very pleased, but little did I know what was to happen later.
“Late afternoon, I was in an area filled with a multitude of features I couldn’t resist. A piece of breadflake was sent midriver before it bounced through the swim and rested under some far-bank cover. It wasn’t long before a few plucks were followed by a slackening of the line, so I tightened into what turned out to be this 7lb chub – a small-river specimen.”
“ON Saturday morning I headed to a local stretch of the River Trent with two lads – James and Finley. “We were pike fishing, using floatfished roach deadbaits presented on the bottom, which we dropped into a slack bit of water behind a fallen tree. “The action was hectic – we had three doubles in the first hour! James’ fish weighed 13lb 8oz, mine was 20lb 1oz, and 15-year-old Finley had his first pike – all 17lb 8oz of it!”
“A SLIGHT rise in temperature prompted me to start my bream and tench campaign a little early. I headed to my local club lake and baited with groundbait and maggots. Over the top, I fished a maggot feeder heli-style, with a big bunch of maggots as my hookbait. “After a quiet four hours, a 9lb 7oz bream got me off the mark. Next came a brace of tench, the bigger one at 7lb 3oz. Just before the session ended, a bream weighing 10lb exactly came to the net and, as I was unhooking it, the rod rattled off again, this time to an 11lb 13oz bream that capped a memorable outing.”
