After publishing my last post, ‘The Lower Lea – A neglected river & her anglers’ just two days ago I was rewarded with a  generous day from the River Lea. As mentioned before the Lower Lea doesn’t give up her quarry too easily but today was different. After some initial carp spotting, some confident and at times explosive feeding I managed to return armed with a rod in the heat of the afternoon and caught a carp in her high teens. The fight was more than spirited, it was tough, being weeded twice and taking numerous long runs down stream, my tackle was well tuned for such a hard fight, this time everything came right and after losing two carp last year on the canal in similar situations I wasn’t going to let this one escape! The dark linear mirror was netted on a very steep bank hence why my image taken on a Iphone is rather shoddy, but photographing my catches are never my priority. Looking at this carp I’m sure it had never been caught before, not one of the true monsters but I love these hard fighting dark Lea carp.