Total Carp regular changes tactics to bring him a new personal best from Linear.


Avid Carp consultant and Total Carp regular Ian Russell has big reason to celebrate, after landing a new PB during a recent session on Oxfordshire’s Linear complex.

Fishing the venue’s Manor Farm Lake, carp coach Ian banked one of the water’s top fish known as Spike at 44lb 2oz – breaking his previous best by 8oz.

The capture, which Ian was ‘overjoyed’ at, came following a change of tactics, which the 50-year-old saw as key to the result.

“I’ve been targeting Manor Farm over the summer and autumn with boilies,” Ian told total Carp. “ I’ve been doing well, but I thought I could do better, so I decided to go for a maggot approach and it more than paid off.”

Laying down a two gallon bed of maggots, Ian fished a neutrally balanced hookbait of half a 10mm High-lite topped with around 15 hairrigged maggots. This was presented on a Gardner long shank Incisor size 8 hook to an Avid Carp prototype 25lb hooklink with an Avid Carp 2oz distance lead.

Fishing at 60 yards, the all-important bit came at 1.30am on the first night of a three night trip.

“I could tell this was a different class of fish from the smaller ones I’ve been catching straight from the off,” said Ian. “It plodded like big fish do. It took 30minutes to get it to the net, but while it was in the margins it locked me up three times when it just stopped dead. When I saw it in the net the bottom of its head was caked in silt. I’ve never seen it before but a lot of the top carp anglers believe that it’s where the fish rams itself into the bottom to try and get rid of the hook.”

Weighed and sacked up – for which Ian received special permission – Ian was over the moon at the new PB and what he described as ‘the biggest looking carp for its size that he’d ever seen’.

“It looked massive and had a huge frame. It will easily go to over 50lb in the future,” he added.

Over the next two days Ian went on to bank a further three fish of 24lb 4oz, 29lb 12oz and 31lb 8oz, this time on a prototype Avid Carp boilie, which is obviously already working well.

For more details on fishing Manor Farm Lake at Linear, click here.

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