Short write up by Darrell Piper.

My friend and I had decided to fish a three day session at a new Swedish venue for me, that is known to contain some very big fish. After spending some time looking at a number of different swims the only one left suitable due to the very high water level was the pontoon, there are only five true swims on the lake (22 acres in size) and even these can get very overgrown during the summer months. Fishing this swim meant we had to erect our bivvy's up tight in a small area but you are still 20 yards or so away from your rods. We had used a boat to bait an area a long way into the lake where we knew fish had been caught by other anglers fishing from a swim which was completely under water now. The bait we had decided upon was Maize, Hemp, Tiger nuts and Mainline Pulse boillies, these were to be scattered over a wide area between weed beds but after fishing the first night without any movement on the indicators or seeing any movement of fish in the area we decided to change the plan of attack. This time we looked much nearer to our own bank (about 60yards). From the boat we found a clear area where the depth changed from 9ft to 11ft, the bottom felt to be fine silt pockets which held an abundance of bloodworm, this seemed like the perfect place we  baited with 3 kilos of hemp, 1 kilo of maize, 1/2 kilo of tigers. and 1/2 kilo of mainline Pulse boillies.

We had to wait till 4pm in the afternoon when the right hand rod tip gave a slight movement, then the delkim bite alarm gave just two bleeps, and the fox swinger moved about an inch, knowing that these fish can be very shy feeders, I struck straight away bringing the rod tip well past the vertical position, I felt something not really big and thought that I might have hooked a small Tench but as the fish came closer in, it started to give more of a spirited fight. My fishing buddy Tony (the scuba man) who was waiting ready with the net said he could see the fish and it was a very big Bream, depending on the bulk of the fish it could be close to the national record.

After landing the fish and taking the necessary photos and checking it's weight on two different sets of scales it's weight was confirmed as 6.1kg (13lb 7oz). Some anglers after checking the photos think it might be the same fish which holds the current record (7kg) which was caught earlier in the year carrying spawn, this has to be confirmed, but as you can see from the picture the fish seems in perfect condition, let's hope it continues to do well and continues to increase in weight.