For the past eighteen months, I have been concentrating on a very busy club lake, local to me. I have also spent a little bit of time fishing another lake on the complex, which is home to a very small handful of stunning carp and also completely different to the main lake. However, having done just over twenty nights on the harder lake, I still felt the need to carry on with the main lake; targeting the originals. After my first few sessions on the main lake, I had been lucky enough to capture two out of the three originals I was targeting; the biggest being ‘the plated mirror’ at 33lb 1oz.

Throughout the summer I focused on one swim that I really thought I would catch the big mirror from. After switching from lake to lake, all I seemed to be catching was 20lb commons and stockies. To be honest, the summer was pretty slow over there, the odd bite here and there and I just started to lose interest. It seemed as If I was more interested in riding my BMX than being down the lake. After starting at Sparsholt College in September, I haven’t really had the chance to get out fishing much. But for the last couple of weeks, something has been telling me to get down there and fish that swim. So I did. I arrived at the lake on a Sunday afternoon, about 3 o’clock for a quick over nighter as I had college on Tuesday. I set up, and began to sort my rods out. Having tied a few rigs the night before, I was pretty much sorted. On my left hand rod, I had a blowback rig tied with a size 6 Covert Mugga hook, and on my right hand rod, I had a hinge stiff rig tied with 20lb Trick Link and a size 5 Gardner Covert Chod hook. After spodding out a kilo of boilie onto both spots, I began to put my rods out. A couple of decent casts and the rods were out there.

Throughout the evening I remained confident and felt like that night was the one. All that was running through my head was “I’m going to catch it.” After hearing a few jump around midnight I fell asleep feeling really hyped up and confident. At 7 o’clock the following morning I was luckily woken up to the sound of my reel clicking, as my bobbin had jammed the roller on my alarm. I quickly jumped out of my brolly and hit into what felt like a huge heinous bream, a load of dead weight! Throughout the fight I had a weird feeling that this was it… the big mirror! It didn’t show itself once until it finally came up to the net. My heart sunk and all I kept thinking was “please don’t come off!” I had finally done it and after eighteen months I had caught it at last! After calling pretty much everyone I know, a few people came down to help me with the fish, as it was looking big! With the scales zeroed and the sling ready, we settled on a weight of 40lb 2oz! A new personal best for me and the biggest it’s known to have been out at! Ideal!