Korda ace banks Lea Valley target fish.
Steve ‘The Apache’ Cliff has been enjoying a good run of form this year. Until now, he’d banked many of the bigger residents in his target Lea Valley water apart from the one he wanted most! Well that all changed recently, and on his birthday of all days!

Steve arrived at the lake for what was due to be his last session of the season, bringing to a close his seven-weekend campaign. He found the swim that had been so productive for him was taken, so he dropped into a swim that he’d never actually fished before.

Steve opted to use the hinged stiff rig, incorporating Mouth Trap and a size-8 Choddy hook, alongside his normal braided setups. He fished two rods on his usual tightly spodded area, then scattered Cell boilies more loosely around the area, fishing his hinged stiff rig among them.

He took a five-fish catch from the new spot, including the sought-after Half Lin at 40lb 8oz. While doing pictures of the big ‘un, one of his other rods was away with a stunning, long 27lb 12oz common on the end.

Steve was clearly delighted, in a statement on his sponsor's website, he commented: “What a way to end my run of seven weekends on the lake; a five-fish catch including my target fish on my birthday, from a swim I had never fished before! I’m well chuffed with what I caught; the lake had fished hard but I managed 36 chances landing 30 of them. I didn’t blank any of the weekends and I caught at least three fish each trip. It just shows you that 5kg of Cell applied to an open-water area once a week can do a lot of damage! It’s the first time that anyone has heard of the Half Lin being caught on a boilie too! Every bite was on either a 10mm Mainline Milky Toffee or 10mm Pineapple Juice pop-up.”

Steve now plans to head back to his native Bedfordshire for the summer, to settle an old score. Watch this space for more details!