Personal best smashed with 51lb 8oz mirror

DAVE Smedley smashed his personal best of 38lb with this 51lb 8oz mirror caught from the Monks Pit syndicate in Cambridgeshire.

With more than half the lake frozen over, the 44-year-old from Essex only had a small area of water to fish and targeted a dying kelp bed at 60 yards range.

He landed a 36lb mirror on the first morning and then his alarm burst in to life out of blue 48 hours later.

“The fight was unbelievable,” he said. “The fish went through a set of reeds and then did its best to get under the platform I was fishing from. By this point I knew it was a very big fish and was dreading losing it. Thankfully I got it in the net the next time it rolled on the surface.

Dave offered a Mainline Cell boilie hookbait in a solid PVA bag over a bed of hemp on a Fox Coretex hooklink and a size 7 Nash Fang X hook.