Like lots of others Peter Foster has been having a hard time with his barbel fishing recently. To be precise, looking back over his records, Peter calculated that since his last fish back in October he has had 16 short sessions on the Rother totalling nearly 50 hours. He has had nothing, not even a chub, bream or eel until last Thursday at 5.15 p.m. when along came a big one.

In the last five minutes of what seemed certain to be another blank and which had him despairing of ever catching again, a 14 pounder picked up his bait and hung on for quite a while. Peter describes the feeling of banking such a superb specimen as ‘ worth the wait’ but added ‘I think’.

A very worthy contender for the Specimen Trophy perhaps, but you never know most of the bigger Barbel seem to show in the latter months of the season.