Simon Baker is certainly on a role this season, having been preoccupied with chub on the Lea for the last few seasons, he never really had the chance to target the venues famous big barbel. But knowing it was going to be in flood he decided to have a go for them and grabbed some big chunks of spicy luncheon meat from the freezer.

Finding the river still up in flood but slowly dropping, he used big leads and back leads to pin everything down to avoid the weed and branches floating down. His first cast resulted in a few plucks and then a wrap round which he missed, but marks on the bait suggested eels were the culprit. He waited an hour on his next cast before around 10 yards of line were inexplicably stripped from the rod, causing him to jump up. Just about to sit down, the reel went into utter meltdown, and after several powerful runs he had the longest, most pristine barbel he’s ever seen come over the net which took the scales round to an impressive 18lb 2oz.

Well done Simon!