DOUBLE Angler’s Mail Specimen Cup winner Fred Healey landed a rare mixed brace of specimens when he visited an Essex gravel pit to target the tench, bream and eels.
He hauled a dozen tench to 10 lb 13 oz, pictured here, plus three eels to 6 lb 9 oz, but sadly the bream proved more elusive.
Two of the other tench were eight-pounders, and the rest were specimen fish in the 7 lb bracket.
Uckfield, East Sussex-based Fred, who again was a winner in Angler’s Mail magazine’s Korum Specimen Cup, said: “The big eel came in the early hours of the morning.
“I knew that I had big un when I saw it in the light of my head torch, but I wasn’t ready for the fight that it gave me on the bank!
“It was the ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger’ of the eel world. It took ages for it to calm down enough for me to get some photographs.
“It certainly was full of attitude, but I won the day and managed to get some decent pictures.
“After I’d had the tench and the eel, I was really up for the hat-trick, by having a nice big bream! Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be this time.”
All the fish fell to either maggot or lobworm fished with a block-end feeder. The majority of fish came on worm, all cast over a large bed of groundbait.
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