It’s been a while since I got on the end of a large carp, having been blitzed by bream and tench on my local syndicate during recent efforts. With a slightly amended strategy of a boilies-only approach, a squid-Scopex snowman concoction was my chosen bait to target something a bit bigger.

Sure enough, around 6 hours into my day session, the alarm sounded and I was in! It felt solid, but very little movement indicated a bream had likely taken the bait and picked up a large helping of weed from the bed I was casting over. Almost immediately, the fish broke the surface (about 70 yards out), which was classic bream behaviour, cementing my suspicions. As the fish wallowed toward me, still on the surface at about 40 yards, it looked strange – like a very long bar of gold – this was no bream…

My Dad was manning the landing net, and as we looked on, a lovely big carp was voluntarily swimming towards us with absolutely no fight in it whatsoever. With a thick lily pad bed to my left margin, I was fearful that the Kraken would awaken and make a beeline for this treacherous snag when it got closer... but it didn’t, and before we knew it, I had a socking-great bullet-shaped common relaxing in the net.

I pulled the fish out of the water with ease, and it behaved wonderfully for a couple of pictures and a quick weigh-in – not one single roll, flap, or flip!

28 pounds and 6 ounces of the most laid back, agreeable carp I have ever had the fortune to catch – a master bream impersonator!