Brace of fifties for Nash's Jack Brown

Jack Brown has become one of an elite group of anglers who can lay claim to catching a brace of UK fifties after landing a 52lb 1oz common and a 50lb mirror from Kevin Nash’s Church Lake in Essex.

It was a case of hard work and patience paying off for the Leighton Buzzard-based angling apprentice who changed swims three times to keep on top of the fish.

The first day of his 72 hour session passed without event, and with the wind pushing into a bay on his right he decided a move was on the cards. Just as the light was fading on the second evening he saw a patch of fizzing close to an island and flicked a rig onto a clear patch just behind the feeding fish.

Shortly afterwards one of his alarms screamed into life and a mammoth 45 minute fight followed.
“The fish weeded me up solid and I had to go out in the boat to get above it and pull it free,” Jack told Angling Times. “I eventually bundled a huge pile of weed into the net, and I couldn’t actually see which fish it was. At this point I realised I’d left the oars on the bank and as there was no breeze I was stuck in the middle of the lake! I managed to shout one of the warehouse lads, Scott, who thankfully rowed out and helped me back to the bank. When we pulled back the weed I was greeted by the incredible sight of a huge common, which at 52lb 1oz beat my pb by just over 1lb.”
The next day he moved swims again to get a better line lay, and that night he completed his historic brace with a 50lb mirror.

“The fish put up another good fight but thankfully wasn’t quite as eventful as the first one. One of the other Nash lads who was with me said it looked like a decent fish while I was playing it, and I was literally speechless when the scales went round to 50lb. To have one fifty was amazing, but to have two in a session is something I could never have dreamed of.”

Both of his fish were taken on 15mm Nash White Monster Squid pop-ups over a scattering of whole and chopped Monster Squid red boilies with a few handfuls of hemp and maggots. “Using a light coloured hookbait over darker free offerings is a tactic I use a lot as it makes your hookbait stand out and the fish definitely home in on it quicker. I mounted my pop-ups on stiff-hinged rigs which are a great big fish presentation because they present the baits perfectly for the way the bigger carp feed.
Both of my fish were nailed squarely in the bottom lip and there’s no way they were coming off.”

Incredibly, at the age of 20 Jack now has three fifties to his name, and only a week earlier he landed a 40lb 8oz mirror from an Oxfordshire syndicate.