TACKLE LEGEND BANKS COUNTY RECORD
33 years ago Kevin Nash’s tackle business may still have been in its infancy… but his carp-catching prowess certainly wasn’t – as this look into the Angling Times archives proves.
Back in the 1980s, carp over 40lb were extremely thin on the ground and – Redmire aside – most of those that did exist lived in rock-hard waters in the South or South East of the country.
Essex was, and still is, home to many such venues, among them the famous Silver End, near Braintree.
For a while, it was one of THE premier big-carp venues in the country, and in 1981 it attracted the attention of a 26-year-old budding fishing tackle entrepreneur by the name of Kevin Nash. Having grown up in the area, Kevin soon set his sights on catching the lake’s largest resident, which also happened to be the biggest fish in Essex at the time.
Four years later, in July 1985, Kevin finally got his reward when he slipped his net under the highly-prized 41lb 8oz mirror.
Kevin, who had set up Happy Hooker Tackle in 1978 before changing it to Kevin Nash Tackle six years later, told Angling Times: “When I hooked it (at 10.30pm) I thought it was just a low double. I gave it a lot of stick, and even sat down while playing it to put my other welly on. If I had known what it was I would willingly have gone in barefoot!”
A home-rolled flattened ‘silt-beater’ 14mm boilie was the successful hookbait for Kevin, who fished it on a ‘revolving’ hair rig on a size 10 hook, a Dacron hooklink and 12lb mainline. He presented his rig over a bed of mini Richworth boilies.
Kevin had come close to catching it two years earlier after managing to get the fish feeding on his bait, but he moved swims when the wind changed, only to see it caught at 35lb 4oz from the swim he had just vacated.