Jamie Cartwright has finally broken his personal best tench with a magnificent 11lb 15oz specimen!

Here’s how the reigning Drennan Cup Champion did it:

“After targeting this particular stillwater for five of the last six springs and two years since my last tench capture I got the result I had been praying for!

“I baited heavily the evening before with four pints of casters, 1kg of hemp, 1/2kg of krill pellets and 1kg of black groundbait. I then cast out PVA mesh bags of casters with Drennan artificial casters on the hook, rigged up on my Specialist Tench & Bream 12ft 1.75lb rod.

“Within ten minutes I saw a big tench roll over the baited area. Fifteen nerve-wracking minutes later the bobbin hit the rod and we were in business! That two year duck breaker weighed 9lb 5oz and really made up for all of the blanks!

“A while later my friend Dougie came along from the next swim to cook some celebratory breakfast. Midway through this a tench rolled over my left hand rod. ‘That’s as good as a bite,’ I said to Doug!

“I’d just flipped the eggs without breaking the yokes when the left-hand rod burst into life. The fish powered off, taking lots of line, making me think it could be a small carp, but the head shaking kept making me think big tench.

“When it finally popped up in front of us, both our jaws dropped! It was the biggest tench either of us had ever seen and on the scales it proved to be a personal best by exactly 1lb, weighing 11lb 5oz!

“I can honestly say I was fishing this pit in the hope/expectation it would produce something of this calibre, but I was well and truly blown away to see it laying on the unhooking mat! I hold this capture right at the top, above all others, and second only to winning the Drennan Cup in my list of angling achievements.

“Incidentally, the breakfast was salvaged and tasted all the better with a ‘donkey’ in the sack! Needless to say, I’ll be spending as much of the next month as possible trying to find out what else could be lurking in there!”