Kevin Sanders’ 3lb 3oz Rudd!

Specimen angler Kevin Sanders is no stranger to catching massive rudd and has only gone and done it again with the capture of a 3lb 3oz chunk! Here’s the man himself explaining how the session unfolded…

Kevin says…

I recently had a day’s fishing for rudd planned but unfortunately the weather was not on my side…. or so I thought. The wind was a cold easterly and to be honest I thought I might be wasting my time. I don’t have the luxury of picking prime conditions so it was now or never.

My tactics were to use the method feeder and trusted bait combo of 2mm F1 Sweet and 4mm Source pellets whilst feeding 12mm Source boilies over the feeders. Hookbaits were Yellow Hit N Run popups.

To my surprise on the first cast, I had a lovely rudd of around 1lb 8oz. A great start and anything else would be amazing. Well, I was soon into another fish and this time I could tell it was a tench by the way it was fighting. Sure, enough a tench of about 4lb was netted.

The action was intermittent but another three tench were caught over the next 4 or 5 hours. They were all roughly the same size as the first one. The bream also made an appearance to keep the action consistent and several fish to around 6lb were netted.

I was beginning to think the rudd were not really on the feed when I had a jittery take indicative of a rudd. It was shaking its head violently as it kited left. Unfortunately, this fish managed to shed the hook. I was gutted as it felt like a sizeable fish and to lose one when they were not jumping up the bank was annoying to say the least!

I kept recasting and feeding the source boilies and not long later I had another take. This too felt like a rudd and thankfully it was soon in the net. Weighing in at 2lb 12oz I was very happy and could have left for home a happy angler if that was the biggest fish of the day.

Now sometimes we all need a little bit of good luck. After losing the big rudd earlier I was hoping some would come my way. Well, it did but with a little bit of bad luck mixed in for good measure!

I suddenly had a drop back bite and lifted into a hefty fish. It plodded in towards me in a typical breamy fashion. It plodded around under the rod tip before getting snagged in a lily. No drama as it’s just a bream. Well, that was until it turned into a big rudd as it flashed while attached to the lily!

Earlier in the day I extended to net handle to its full length but the fish was snagged just out of reach. I saw the fish again and now knowing it was a big rudd I went into panic mode! The swim was muddy and as I made a desperate lunge to scoop up the fish I fell flat on my backside!

My rod flew out of my hand and half fell into the lake but I managed to keep hold of the net handle. I lifted the net without knowing if the fish was in it or not. I pulled the net towards me and the lily snapped off as I did so. I lifted the net and thanks to some good luck a big golden rudd was wallowing in the bottom. What a relief!

I was walking around the swim (in pain) getting the mat and weighing gear ready just laughing to myself. The end result was an amazing fish weighing 3lb 3oz and was my second biggest ever rudd. It was a very fine line between failure and success and that little bit of good luck was most welcome.