Who said Friday the 13th was unlucky? It certainly wasn’t unlucky for Ben Sharman because he landed the first of two specimen roach on Friday the 13th of September. Ben started the day fishing at Fittleworth. After noting the roach were very active there he packed up and moved to the Arun to catch the tide and hopefully some of the better roach that inhabit the river.

He didn’t have to wait long, after only his 4th cast Ben hooked and landed a new PB roach of 2lb 10oz which was witnessed and photographed by his long time fishing partner Steve ‘The Biker’ Warner. The session turned out to be very productive as Ben also had several other roach over a pound, chub to 4lb 8oz and two decent bream.

After seeing how the roach reacted to feeding in his local pond Ben decided to return to the Arun a couple of days later never imagining he would better his 2lb 10oz fish.

However after about an hour fishing using the same tactics that accounted for his previous PB he bettered it with an incredible specimen of 2lb 14oz. This time he was fishing alone but the fish was witnessed by a friendly canoeist who was passing by at the time. As in the previous session Ben went on to catch more chub and bream

Ben puts his success down to the culmination of hundreds of hours of perseverance, different baits, different rigs, and different methods. Goes to show hard work and dedication pays dividends sometimes….