After my ‘Red Letter Day’ on the Kennet the other week, I had an email from Stewart Moss, telling about a 14.14.0 barbel that he had banked from the same river during an evening session.

Moss, who works for top tackle manufacturer Drennan, hair-rigged a couple of 10mm CC Moore’s Meteor boilies fished with a PVA bag containing smaller pellets.

The fish took the bait at 10.10pm and fought exceptionally hard for a big barbel.

At one point it came towards him on a fast run and then kited under a near-bank bush, from where he could not move it for several minutes, despite trying all the angles.

In the end, he put the rod in the rest for a couple of minutes, which did ther trick, and it was soon laying in the bottom of his net.