MARK Hatherway landed the fish of a lifetime on the recent Total-Fishing.com trip to the River Test are Timsbury Manor in the shape of this magnificent 3lb 8oz roach.

“When I arrived at the river I decided a roving approach was the order of the day,” Mark told Southern Angler magazine. “ So armed with my trusty Normark Titan 2000 and ABU 506 I wandered down to a fishy-looking swim below some shallows that the flowed into a deep pool.”

As the river was running clear, Mark set up a waggler rig to target the far bank, a tactic that saw dace, small roach and a 2lb brown trout readily come to his maggots hook bait.

He was feeding plenty of maggots and believing he may have overfed the swim, Mark rested the swim for a while. It was when he started fishing again that the huge roach took his triple red maggot hook bait.

“It fight felt different to the chub I’d caught earlier,” said Mark. “I thought I’d foul hooked a dace.

“Once in the net I knew it had to be a 2lb fish or even 2lb 8oz,” said Mark.

Fellow Total-Fishing.com regular Andy Ford, who organised the day did the honours before announcing that it went 3lb 8oz.

“As I saw where the needle had settled I flung my arms skywards shouting ‘YEEEESS!’, not something to do on a famous game venue. I’m still smiling now,” he concluded.

Mark’s own story is on the www.total-fishingclub.com site. The river has sinced produced another 3lb roach – more on both stories can be found in the issue of Southern Angler out on the second Wednesday of March.

Geepster