Most anglers would never expect a zig rig intended for carp to produce a specimen roach, but that’s exactly what happened to Sam Willis during a match at Linear Fisheries.
The 34-year-old from Newark, Nottinghamshire, was settling into his bivvy at around 8pm for the evening when a couple of tentative beeps on his alarm turned into one of the biggest surprises of his angling career.
Heading out to investigate, he initially wasn’t sure there was anything on the end when he lifted into the rod.
“I thought I'd hooked some weed at first, but then it kicked back a little, so I began to wind a bit more cautiously in the hope of seeing what I had hooked,” he said.
“When it went into the net, I knew I had a pretty special fish. Even though I was fishing for carp, I could see straight away it was something out of the ordinary.”
The fish Sam had fooled proved to be a magnificent roach weighing 3lb 11oz, a true fish of a lifetime for any angler.
It had fallen to a black piece of foam fished on a 6ft zig rig, making the capture all the more remarkable and proving that you never really know what you’ll catch when you go fishing!
HEAD TO ONE OF THESE VENUES TO CATCH A BIG ROACH...
