Biggest bream of the year landed
THE biggest bream of the year has been caught by Darryn Stolworthy at a new personal best weight of 17lb 7oz.
The Norfolk-based specimen hunter has been focusing his attentions on an ultra-tough local gravel pit that is home to only a handful of large slabs and up until this point hadn’t even seen a sign of his target species.
This all changed on his eighth overnight session of the year, though, after he spodded out a large bed of casters, corn and pellets at 100yds and cast simple rigs with short hooklinks, inline leads and imitation corn hookbaits over the top.
At first light the Angling Direct-backed specialist was woken by his alarms which at first he thought were being set off by the swirling winds - but he soon discovered that the disturbance wasn’t being caused by the elements.
“The weather was terrible and I was dozing in my sleeping bag when my alarm beeped three times then stopped. A couple of minutes later the same happened, but the bobbin still hadn’t moved,” Darryn told Angling Times.
“My mate was stood next to the rods and said ‘It’s just the wind mate’ but no sooner as he said that the bobbin danced up and I was in.
“The fish looked absolutely huge in water and I must admit that I did utter a few swear words when I saw it in the net!
“Usually at this time of the year you’d see the odd bream rolling on the surface, but it’s funny that the first one I’ve clapped eyes on in months weighed 17lb 7oz and was lying on my unhooking mat.”
Darryn had positioned two of his rigs right in the middle of his bed of particles, but it was three hair-rigged grains of imitation corn cast to the edge of his feed that did the trick.
His rig was constructed with a 10lb Preston Powerline hooklink that was tied to a size 10 Gamkatsu hook.