Leigh angler Wayne Gildart will never know the weight of this giant pike he caught while fishing a trout water with friends; but it bottomed out 25lb scales in an instant.  He’d had a couple of trout when he hit something ‘solid’. “I’d caught a couple then hooked into this monster,’ ” he said. “It […]

This season, the Great Ouse has gone up and down so many times Vito Napoli has lost count, but he recently managed two catches, just a few days apart. “The first was from a stretch that some anglers wonder why I bother with, where I’m drawn to a quiet, forgotten bend in the river. Here, […]

When most anglers catch their first pike, it’s generally a small ‘jack’, but when Dave Owen landed his first esox, it took the form of this 30lb 7oz beast! He was fishing Trawsfynydd Lake – a large water in Snowdonia, North Wales – that’s known to hold  large predators. “I was legering sardines on what […]

Yet another colossal barbel has been landed from the River Lea, this time by Mark Saul who slipped the net under a specimen of 19lb 10oz. Fishing one of the day ticket pegs at Kings Weir, Mark introduced two pints of hemp and half a pint of maggots with the bait dropper and fished a […]

This season, two-time Drennan Cup winner Simon Daley set out to catch a truly big barbel from three different rivers and has just completed the challenge in style with this 16lb 9oz fish. Having already landed fish of 18lb 11oz from the Hampshire Avon and 17lb 9oz from the River Lea, the Hampshire angler turned […]

It’s been a slow winter for chub anglers so far, with our mixed conditions making things tricky on many rivers. However, Steve Fenton managed to get out on the Lee Navigation lately – a canalised stretch of the River Lea – and landed this specimen of 7lb 12oz. The fish came on his only bite […]

As the seasons turn, Adam Riches often spends time targeting predators before the rivers have had a good flush through, and lately he’s been targeting pike on a Midlands venue. Fishing a legered smelt to a drop off around 60 yards out, he’d landed a few smaller fish early in the morning. At 10am, he […]

Paul Houghton has just joined a small but elite list of anglers to have landed a 4lb roach after catching this specimen of 4lb 1oz. It was tempted from a southern stillwater, which, interestingly, was not Linear Fisheries – the venue that produced a 4lb 3oz record-equalling redfin to Dai Gribble last spring. Lancashire angler […]

The barbel record has fallen to this 22lb 3oz fish, caught on maggots from the River Lea. The River Lea, which flows from its source in the Chiltern Hills near Luton southeast through Hertfordshire and East London to join the River Thames at Leamouth, is a venue that’s in barbel form like nothing seen before […]

Anglers are today celebrating the good news that fishing is to return to the popular Wingerworth Lido near Chesterfield, following a lengthy campaign that made national headlines. On Monday (Dec 8), councillors on the North East Derbyshire District Council (NEDDC) Environment Scrutiny Committee agreed to proposals from the Angling Trust to lift the controversial fishing […]