Neal Rogers was rewarded for making the long and arduous drive from his home in Kent to Gunthorpe Fishery on the River Trent when he banked this giant barbel weighing 19lb exactly.
He was on a three-day session with his good friend Jason Craven and had the fish on a big bunch of maggots presented on a clip.
Neal had been introducing a mix of pellets and hemp with a Spopper and recast every three hours, adding a PVA bag of pellets alongside his maggot hookbait.
He said the bite ‘came out of nowhere’, with his rod hooping over before he battled the fish for 20 minutes as it worked its way both up and downstream in the strong flows.
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