Just home from trip to our local river seeking out the monsters we have reported on losing in some of my previous reports in 2011.

We have uprated our gear to 45lb braid mainline and 35lb hooklinks - this probably sounds very strong, but we have all hooked and lost some very big fish on many of these trips, when fishing with regular specimen tackle. Extremely powerful fish that we could not extract on 25lb line.

We have found these fish are across the river close to some BIG snags - on this trip we did not hook any of these particular monsters, but had carp out into doubles, best 18lb 4oz, these fish were in beautiful condition, having probably never seen a hook in their lives.

These fish were no problem to extract from the area, so the jury is still out on what we have been losing 30lb+ carp or 20lb+ barbel? Specimens of which we have seen in the area in the past.

Watch this space as I'll report on them when we catch them!

John.