The Gargantuans

Although my own list of personal best captures makes for modest reading to say the least, for instance I'm yet to catch a sizable barbel, a bream over 7lb, a tench much over 6lb or a chub over 4 and a half and have only recently achieved the milestone of catching a 20lb carp.

That's not to say that I haven't encountered some leviathans along the way, because I have.....


Picture a bright sunny Summer afternoon at Napton Reservoir, sometime in the 1980's, it was blazing hot (as hot as a chip I like to say), so hot that few anglers were fishing, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the only sound was the faint background hum only experienced in high summer at the waters edge.

Phil and I had gone along to the reservoir for a walk round taking a bag of bread with us in the hope of feeding some carp, glare on the surface prevented us from seeing very much at all as we walked along the causeway bank but as we approached the far end of the lake we could see fish moving on the surface in the furthest corner of, what was, the small reservoir.

We had soon walked the length of the canal bank and the culprits were revealed as we turned the corner onto the far bank, carp, six or seven fish to about mid teens in weight, big fish for the 80's were cruising on the surface along the avenues formed by the abundant weed in the area so we proceeded to bung out bread in their general direction.

Naturally the carp had seen it all before and continued to bask in the sun as before ignoring all our offerings with casual disdain.

I moved on and left Phil to it, I had probably walked about thirty yards before I saw it....

Just a couple of feet from the stones of the bank, in crystal clear water and in a small area free of weed was a colossal tench, the like of which I had never seen. Dark in colour, motionless and huge it literally took my breath away.

Eventually I managed to shout Phil but as he approached it slunk away into the weed never to be seen again. He wouldn't, and I couldn't blame him, accept my estimate of 14lb, but I swear it was, even if I was to concede a couple of pounds a twelve pound tench was front page stuff back then.

Breakages amongst tench anglers at Napton were common in those days and carp anglers were pretty thin on the ground, who knows what monsters could have been lost !



When working on a trout farm in Hampshire the water source was the fly anglers Mecca the River Test, a beautiful crystal clear chalk stream. The fish farm offices were located in an old water mill and upstream of the mill was situated a relatively large pool incorporating hatches to allow control of water levels and control of water being allowed to pass through the mill.

Each and every winter for the entire seventeen years I worked there, at some point in October or early November a shoal of about forty roach would appear in the pool and there they would stay until early spring when they would migrate upstream, the following Winter they would be back without fail.

Fish in this shoal were from about 8oz up to, I kid you not, an estimated 3lb+, one fish in particular could well have made three and a half pounds. Incredible I know !

Did we fish for them? You bet !

In clear conditions, you wouldn't get a touch. If you were lucky you would catch one of the big grayling or dace but the roach, which were as wild as can be, were way too canny.
However, in coloured conditions when the river was fining down after a flood we did catch a few, my mate Tony and I both caught fish to two and a quarter pounds on bread but never the bigger ones unfortunately.

Coarse fishing on the Test is tricky but the fish are huge, dace average about three quarters of a pound, grayling to well over 3lb, big pike and potential for truly enormous roach and perch. If the chance ever comes your way give it a go !



When conditions were right we ran the big eel trap which was an integral part of the mill and we would sometimes accumulate huge hauls to sell on to dealers, these fish would usually be from 6oz to 1lb but when eels became trapped inside the maze of the fish farm where escape was impossible they grew big on an abundance of dead trout.

The basic layout of the fish farm consisted of a nursery unit where the fish were fed up to the fingerling stage before being transferred to the main farm consisting of 25 large circular tanks some 25 feet diameter by about 6 feet deep, these emptied into enormous ponds around the outside of the farm by means of a bung in the centre of the tank, the final stage of production took place in the big ponds where the trout were grown on to marketable size.

Catching the resident eels relied on one of the circular tanks sitting empty for a few days. With no water passing through the underground pipe leading to the big pond the eels would take refuge in the pipe in their hundreds. It was then simply a case of re-fitting the bung, filling the tank and flushing the eels, by removal of the bung, into a keepnet braced over the pipe's exit by two burly fish farmers.

On the occasion in question we flushed a tank which had been empty for several weeks, as one of the men bracing the net I could tell it was an exceptional haul.
Once on the bank the first thing that was obvious was that we had a lot of eels to deal with, mainly in the 3lb class which was about usual, then, almost as one, we clapped eyes on the closest thing I have ever seen to a genuine fresh water monster.

Dark grey, almost black in colour with wrinkled and leathery skin, broad snouted with eyes white with cataracts the eel was a gargantuan. Not as long as I might have expected but in putting your hands around the middle of the fish your fingers would barely touch.
At eight and a half pounds it was a rare sight indeed and too old and noble a fish to appear smoked on a dinner plate in Europe, it was granted it's freedom.