Big water pike success for Gary Knowles

This stunning 27lb 8oz pike was caught by well-known specimen hunter Gary Knowles when he set his sights on a daunting 850-acre lake in the North West.

He was working a lure with a 7ft rod at around 60yds from his own bank when the mint-conditioned fish struck.

Gary, from Warrington in Cheshire, used a Rapala ‘Gliding Rap’ pattern, attached to 50lb braid, and had to coax the fish over the top of a bank of thick weed that lined the shallow bay that he was fishing from.

 “It was real heart in the mouth stuff with this fish because it came leaping out of the water on several occasion, and when I got it in the net the hooks just fell out,” Gary Told Angling Times.