30-pounder landed from a yorkshire stillwater

A teenager has proved you don’t need to fork out hundreds of pounds to catch monster pike by catching a 30lb 4oz specimen from a club-run stillwater.

Chew Valley and Blagdon reservoirs have been hitting the headlines for their big pike captures – but 18-year-old Yorkshireman Jack Miller showed there are more readily available venues that can also produce a dream fish.

He slipped the net under his 30-pounder from a Hull & District Anglers Association-run water in East Yorkshire.

The angler from Beverley bagged the giant predator, which beat his previous best by a whopping 13lb, on a floatfished 4ins roach livebait during a
two-hour session after work. 

“It nearly never happened,” Jack told Angling Times. “I cast out under an overhanging far-bank tree, then began to pack up. 

“I was all ready to go home when the float just tore off. 

“It felt really heavy, like playing a log, so I knew straight away that it was something special, but I didn’t think for a moment it would be as good as this. 

“It just shows there are lots of club waters out there which hold monster fish.”

Jack’s fish isn’t the only big pike to have been caught away from Chew and Blagdon either. 

Last week Dai Gribble bagged a 32lb 4oz specimen from Farmoor Reservoir in Oxfordshire, while Yorkshireman Chris Darke bagged an astonishing 41lb 12oz pike from Scarborough’s renowned big-fish water, Wykeham Lakes.

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