All-round angler Mark Pilley from London made a last minute decision to go roach fishing and was rewarded for his effort with six impressive roach.

After receiving a call from a fellow angler saying that the river should be perfect for roach within a few days, Mark took the opportunity early the next morning.

“I arrived at the river around 7 am, quickly got the waders on and walked down to a swim I had in mind; one where I knew there would be some good roach sitting out of the flow in the slacker water.”

“I stood there feeding the swim with red maggots for around 40 minutes while waiting for it to get light enough to see the float. The first few trots were uneventful, but about 10 trots into the session the float buried, followed by a firm strike and a solid thud on the rod tip. At that point, I thought it was a big roach, but shortly a chub of about 3lb was resting in the net.

“I thought that the chub would have spooked the roach out of the swim, but how wrong was I. Within the next three hours I went on to bank six roach, the best being 2lb 1oz, backed up with another 2lb exactly as well as roach of 1lb 15oz, 1lb 13oz, and 1lb 11oz. Definitely, a morning’s fishing I will not forget for a long time!”

Mark used his 14ft Drennan Matchpro Ultralight float rod coupled with a centrepin loaded with his favourite 3.2lb Float Fish. He used a small No.4 Stick and a 2lb Supplex hooklink to a size 18 Kamasan B980 hook to present a single maggot.