16 June, 2025 | Carp | Articles | News

Tony Gibson’s 39lb 15oz Mirror Carp

The catch report behind an incredible 39lb 15oz mirror carp banked by specimen hunter, Tony Gibson back in May…

Tony Gibson says:

With the chance of a proper 3-night session ahead, I arrived early to have a good look around before deciding where to pitch up.

Being early May, the big pit was busy as expected and the first two areas that I’d had in mind while travelling down had bivvies in all the popular swims.

After walking and looking for more than an hour, I’d completed a full circuit and was starting my second. In that time I’d seen precious little and was starting to fear that I’d missed the early morning window of opportunity to see a few ‘shows’ to direct me towards the right area.

Then, just as I’d finished walking down the little grassy path leading to an unfavoured swim, I spotted something disturb the waters surface out of the corner of my eye. I half expected a coot to pop up, or a grebe to surface nearby, but no birdlife suddenly appeared and it seemed likely that the disturbance had been caused by a fish.

I continued to watch for signs, and although I didn’t see any more fish as such, a couple of patches of “fizz” looked quite ‘carpy’. With nothing much else to go on, I decided to grab my gear and give the swim a go. But it still took a while before I was ready to get going, as the swim was probably the furthest from the car park and required a long hard slog with the barrow laden with everything required for the session.

Finally I’d got rods ready to go, with light 1.75oz leads on all 3 as I didn’t want to disturb any fish already in residence.

Single 12mm Choccy Malt pop-up on the right-hand rod followed by two catapulted pouchfuls of 12mm CompleX-T and a 12mm Sweet Spice pop-up on the left-hand rod, again followed by two pouchfuls of 12mm ‘freebies’, and just a small PVA mesh bag of broken boilie bits accompanying a 12mm CompleX-T bottom bait tipped with plastic corn on the middle rod.

The Right-hand rod went to the spot where I’d seen the fish, then the middle and left to areas where I’d seen patches of “fizz”.  They were all short range flicks; between 4 and 8 ‘wraps’ out.

I’d got a couple of attractive looking islands further out, but the multitude of coots around both islands were very busy feeding their young chicks and I imagined having the hookbaits regularly being picked up by the feathery fiends and didn’t fancy the disturbance that the resulting recasts and suchlike would cause.

As the day wore on, with clear blue skies and the sun relentlessly beaming down, the likelihood of a bite diminished rapidly, with no further patches of ‘carpy’ looking “fizz” to be seen, and with a lack of any sort of shade I eventually had to get the bivvy up just to provide some form of protection in my cramped, little sun-trap of a swim.

However, a small common had come for a very brief visit to the margins, just by the rods, late in the morning and I felt that the swim still had potential for a take at some point.

Overnight and early the following morning were looking most likely for action, so later in the afternoon I risked a few more casts to get a better idea of the makeup of the bottom in my spots and to get some fresh hookbaits and a bit more bait in.

The right and left-hand rods had quite a bit of silkweed type stuff about, so I stuck with the pop-ups, although adjusted to fish a bit higher. The closest-in, middle-rod spot felt the cleanest, especially at 4.5 wraps, so I continued with the bottom bait presentation and introduced a few spods of a mix of Dynamite Frenzied Hemp, mixed 4mm Swim Stim Betaine and Krill pellets and crumbed CompleX-T boilie glugged in Premium CSL Liquid.

After dark, the really early start and the welcome cool of the night air after the blistering heat of the day soon had me dozing off and I must have been properly ‘sparked out’ when the wail of the alarm on the middle rod suddenly jerked me wide awake around 1am!

I was aware of some branches poking into the water further down the margins attached to some spikey-looking bushes growing at the waters edge both to the right and left of my swim, but the carp was really keen to try and put some distance between us and wanted to stay further out for most of the fight.

For the majority of the time I was more worried about the possibilities of it getting caught up in snags out by the islands, rather than the problem areas closer to the swim.

Eventually the carp started to tire and I could bring it closer, where it managed to go under the other lines a few times, but fortunately without knitting anything together.

Once it was in the net it looked a good fish and I was thinking about the possibility of a “40”.

The sling was zeroed on the scales, before I bought the fish up onto the mat to be unhooked and transferred to the sling; where the initial weighing attempt had the needle flickering around the 40lb mark.

Normally I wouldn’t have been too bothered by an ounce or two either way, but I wasn’t going to call it a “40” without being sure, so I needed to make a more stable reading.

With the fish safely retained by the rods I went searching for suitable support for a careful re-weigh, which I found a little further back down the path leading to the swim, as there was a little bushy tree with a V-shaped fork in a branch at just the right height to support one end of the chucky rod rest that I use as a weigh bar through the top loop on the scales to help weigh the bigger fish when I’ve not got my weighing tripod with me.

With a small patch of nettles and long grass stomped down, the spot by the bush would be ideal for the self-takes as well, so I set up the mat, weigh gear and the camera equipment all ready to go before fetching the big mirror for a careful re-weigh and some photos.

Once everything was completely steady, the weighing had the needle sit just its own width short of the middle of the mark that would have indicated a “40”, so I was happy to settle for 39.15. A very pleasing fish for the first proper carp of the year, with hopefully more to come.

Gear used for the session included:

Carp Spirit 12ft Magnum X5 3.5tc rods

Okuma 8K reels

19lb Carp Spirit Velocity mono

Size 8 Carp Spirit Razor Short Curve hooks