” I knew straight away that this rudd was a good’un..”

Tim Debrowa only lives ten minutes away from a Fenland river so made it his mission this season to fish it hard and see if he could catch another 3lb rudd, well he’s happy to say he has finally achieved it after a long time of trying with this 3lb specimen.

Tim told us “I’ve been putting three-four sessions in a week at the river since fishing resumed and it’s taken a while to get into the bigger fish. I’ve found that short evening trips work best with the small rudd smashing your bread off the hook if you choose to fish during the day. I tend to arrive to the river at 8:30pm then just feed two or three swims with bread. At first you get the small fish swirling at it but over time the bigger swirls come, and you know the bigger fish have arrived. On this occasion the biggest swirls didn’t arrive until around 10pm when it was dark, but I could tell from the sound of the swirls and their silhouettes on the water that they were only from big fish. It was time to cast out my rig which was 4lb line to a 2g controller float and a size 12 hook. Just before the controller float I’d threaded on a starlight with tubing and secured it in place with float stops, just so I could tell I’d hooked a fish. Within ten minutes of casting out my rig with a floating crust hookbait, a large swirl followed by the starlight shooting under the surface signalled a take and I struck into something very powerful. In this river you either catch really small rudd or really big rudd, so I knew straight away that this rudd was a good’un. As the swims are so overgrown with weed and lily pads close in, there was no messing about during the fight and I had to pull it as hard as I could into the net – praying my line didn’t snap. Thankfully it didn’t and I managed to net this beat of a rudd. On the scales she registered 3lb exactly, which is my second biggest ever. Moments after netting the fish it started raining, so it was difficult getting good pictures in the dark, but I’m happy with the overall outcome.”