A lake exclusive booking at Westfield Fishery in Buckinghamshire saw angler Craig Paris have a truly remarkable session, during which he broke his personal best twice and landed a tremendous 10lb 11oz tench.
Not knowing much about the lake, Craig asked the bailiff and was told there were plenty of carp and some tench to around 8lbs in the lake, making the capture surprising and even more remarkable. The first evening saw Craig land a couple of the resident carp, but it wasn't until the next morning that the tench made an appearance.
"After a couple of carp through the first night, I rebaited the spots I had found with a mixture of hemp, sweetcorn, pellets and crushed boilies thinking the fish had cleared me out," Craig told us.
"The rig I chose to use was a simple blow back hair rig, baited with half a 15mm CC Moore Pacific Tuna boilie topped off with half a 12mm pineapple pop-up."
The tactics and extra bait paid off as not long after, a bite saw Craig land his first tench of the session, a PB-equalling 8lb fish.
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"At around 6.30 am I had my first bite which came in at just over 8lb which was a great start, as to my knowledge the tench didn't get much bigger than that," he said.
"Another bite followed not long after and to my surprise it was bigger, upon weighing the fish I was absolutely buzzing to find out I had broken my PB with a fish of just over 9lb."
Excited for what else could happen, Craig quickly got the rods back out into the lake and within half an hour, another bite left him in complete shock.
"The rod melted off again, assuming I had hooked into a carp, as the fight was amazing but didn’t quite feel like a carp battle."
"I could not believe my eyes when the tench popped up, it was as fat as a football and went 10lb 11oz on the scales and definitely a pb, the fish of the weekend and a fish of a life time," he concluded.
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