After a night of heavy of rain James Hutchinson headed down to a local chalkstream in search of some big roach which are known to take residence in a certain area and wasn’t disappointed as he landed himself this new personal best 2lb 9oz roach.

He told us “When I arrived at the venue I started to trickle in maggots at the head of the short run, it was approx. 6-8ft deep but quickly shelved up to around 4ft within 10 yards. The first run through produced a minnow so I quickly got the rod back out and at the end of the run the float disappeared. I struck and connected to what I initially thought was a grayling as it headed downstream and into the main flow. I soon realised what I’d hook as a big roach swirled mid river.

Fortunately, I managed to coax it out of the flow and back upstream into the slacker marginal water and into my net. It took the scales round to 2lb 9oz, beating my previous pb of 2lb 6.5oz caught from the Hampshire Avon in 2018.”