Big barbel with a taste for chicken!

JAMES Helder’s homemade chicken breast hookbait proved too appetising for this 16lb 1oz barbel to resist!

The self-confessed barbel fanatic flicked the enticing morsel under a low bridge on a southern river before it was picked up by the huge fish two hours later.

“My rod arched round and the reel screamed into life!” James tells us.

“After a tense 25-minute fight the barbel surfaced and my mate Ben kept jumping up and down shouting ‘it’s massive!’”

James Helder’s 16lb 1oz barbel took a chicken breast hookbait