Throughout the seventies the average weights of the Pilsworth fish steadily increased, although doubles were still a little thin on the ground, and anything above 10lb was an event. Steve Milhench of Royton took the first notable fish, a magnificent mirror of 18lb, caught in 1974 we believed it to be the best from the water at that time. In fact Don Bridgewood was at hand to photograph Steve’s fish which later appeared in the press. It was not until June 28th 1976 that the next big fish was caught, this was taken by Neil Gibson of Rawtenstall, another cracking carp of 18lb 12oz. In August 1977 Neil’s record was toppled by a 19lb 4oz fish which came to Kenny Tremaynes rods, thus we believe was the largest carp taken at Pilsworth prior to the end of 1978. Sadly Kenny’s fish died shortly after capture. My humble efforts were rewarded with a mirror of 14lb 8oz, the beasty came in a rather hectic night which produced five other fish, two of which were doubles. This was the result of a five day stint on Pole Island, a noted hot spot. Pole Island was not indeed an island, it was a long steel pole which stood vertical in the water and marked a brick run off tower which lay in around three feet of water dropping off towards the boat house to approximately 11 feet. The marker has long gone, but the feature should still be there?Bait at around this time was the ever reliable luncheon meat and sweet corn, although go-cat, trout pellet and sausage meat specials often came into their own. We also had great success with marshmallows in white and red, when wet they stuck all over everything but made excellent floating baits in that carp had difficulty ejecting them. Marshmallow and suspended crust would be cast to the edge of the weed margins, suspended from the bottom, this often produced a good fish. One problem experience though was that of getting the bait to pop up at the required height, which was generally just a few feet below the surface. The bottom rigs we were using consisted of a hook length an sliding swivel arrangement, the ardsley bomb being attached by a short piece of nylon, although it was effective as a running rig in open water, we did have problems when trying to get suspended the baits to rise. The problem was caused by weed clogging (Northern term) up the swivels. This problem was solved by substituting the swivels with split rings, thus making it easier for the bait to rise through the larger hole the rings possessed . The method used was to position the bait just below the surface tight against the weed margin, the spool on the reel would be fully locked up and you would sit over your rods, one at each side like a gun fighter. The slightest bleep on the old heron alarm (when it chose to work) and you would hit it, applying all the side strain you could muster, this in theory caused the carp to kite across the bay and away from the weed beds, it was then just a case of knocking off the anti-reverse and playing the carp back wind style on the Mitchell 410. The method did work quite successfully on occasion. Having said that, runs were slow and like all great plans, the absolute panic caused by a screaming buzzer in the middle of the night, often resulted in all caution being thrown to the wind in a scurry of flying pots and pans as we made of way “carefully” out of the bivvy (like a gun fighter?) throwing the freshly made cup of coffee over ones head in the process.