I'd never night-fished this lake before but had been keeping an eye out for carp on many walk arounds. I'd heard of the 'Jockey' (54lb) and the 'Brute' (49 lb) and always wondered what it would be like to catch such big carp. The Jockey died a couple of years ago so that left the 'Brute' as the lakes biggest specimen fish.

I arrived Thursday morning around 11am for a two night session and took my time in choosing a swim to fish from. There was only one other person on the lake, so choice of swim was varied. I eventually found a swim opposite the M4, which offered good sun exposure morning and evening with decent wind break cover and clear of any overhead branches. The weather was overcast and windy with occasional squally showers.

After plumbing the swim to check for weed banks etc, I set up two rods, Fox Warrior XT' - 2.75 test curves, Diawa DB4050 bait runners with 12lb main line, both on an in-line rig with green Korda lead core to ESP sink link with size 6 hook on 2oz weights.
I was fishing about 20-25 yards from the margins, just in front of the main bank of weed using 10mm ready-made boilies and PVA bags of dry ground bait containing pellets of various sizes and breadcrumb mix. I peppered the swim with around 20 PVA bags and kept re-casting every hour and a half to two hours on both rods until nightfall. I managed to catch a few Bream to around the 8lb mark on the 10 mm boilies, but never bothered to weigh them.

After grabbing about an hour and a half's sleep, around 5am I was woken by my l/h bite alarm bleeping and landed yet another bream. After landing this fish, I noticed some good carp signs and plenty of bubbling left and right of my swim, about 40 – 50 yards out. I changed rig on my r/h rod to accommodate a 3oz weight, changed boilie size to a 13mm and a fresh bag of PVA and launched the bait 45 yards, close to where the fish signs was seen.

Around 7am the r/h rod was indicating little drop backs. Soon both rods were now showing good activity near my baits. At 9am the r/h rod had a huge drop back and I decided to strike. The clutch on my bait runner went crazy as it was set-up for catching 20+ pounds, so knew I'd hooked into a decent carp.

After a few minutes of the fish taking line, right to left of the swim, I turned the clutch setting up and hauled the fish gently around and into a large patch of weed. The line went very heavy and the fish calmed down a lot, even so I was hauling a LOT of weight, with the fish still struggling and pulling line. Around 9.30 am I netted the huge clump of weed and fish.

I pulled the weed out of the net and the biggest carp I had ever seen was chilling in my landing net!
The 'Brute's' head was as wide as my thighs, what a sight for tired eyes!

The Brute was landed and weighed-in at very respectable 49lb 8oz, a new PB for me by a long shot!

Kind regards,

Peter Noble