It’s good to have goals in life and in your angling, up until this year one of my goals was to catch a 30lb plus linear. I have caught a few in the past but the 30lb barrier still eluded me (although coming close).

The venue I have been fishing is mostly mirrors and only 2 of them are linears.  The smaller of the 2 is a low 20 but the larger of the pair normally weighs from 33lb and tops the scales at just over 40lb at the right time of year.  I first saw this awesome fish on the front cover of a magazine and remember thinking how much I would love to catch it.  Speaking to the regulars on the bank it soon became clear that the big girl likes boilies and normally visits the bank between 2 and 5 times a year (nice).  As the lake is extremely weedy it would be very difficult to target any 1 particular fish, so trying to get as many bites as possible and hope that she slipped up along the way was really the only way to go about it.  This year things were going quite well and I seemed to be catching consistently (when the fish give there selves away as to where they were hiding), but the bigger fish including the linear still managed to avoid me.

That was until one Wednesday evening.  I watched a couple of fish showing a few swims around the lake and moved on to them.  I got 2 rods out in the general area and put a few baits out with the throwing stick, this was shortly followed 20 minutes later by a screaming take and after a short scrap a small common lay in the folds of the net.  The rod was cast back to the same area and a handful of baits were put out in the stick again just before dark.  Nothing happened for the rest of the night but I heard 2 or 3 fish crash in darkness just to let me know they were still in the area.  4am the next morning the silence was broken by my alarm, the same rod was away again and this time it felt a better fish.  During the fight the weed helped me out as it had done in the past by covering up the fishes head, and from then on in it came to the net like a heavy ball of weed.  Not yet knowing what fish was in the net due to the amount of weed in with it I broke the net down and carried the massive ball of weed over to the unhooking mat.  The fish didn’t look very long and on peeling back the weed I realised what I had on the mat.  It was a deep bodied fish, dark in colour and it had a long line of apple slice scales down its flank, she looked ancient!  The Big Lin was on my mat and soon took the needle on the scales around to 38lb 6oz.  The pictures don’t really do the fish justice but seeing it on the bank was awesome and will never be forgotten.