THE DAY TWO LEGENDS CAME FACE TO FACE...

We look back to the 1998 capture of a famous carp by one of the sport’s most talented but secretive anglers

STEVE Pagulatos isn’t a name that will be all that familiar to many modern-day carpers, but 20 years ago it was a different story.

The Surrey-based specialist had an uncanny knack of catching some of the country’s biggest, and most under pressure carp, and it often didn’t take him that long either.

As was the case in June 1998 when Steve banked Britain’s biggest-ever leather carp, the legendary ‘Heather’ weighing 47lb 2oz, from the Car Park Lake at Yateley.

Here’s how Steve, in a rare appearance in the Press, recounted the tale of the catch.

“I’d gone (to Yateley) to fish the North Lake but Basil had been caught an hour before. Nigel Hodgson was fishing the Car Park Lake and persuaded me to fish there too. When I saw the fish swimming in a weedbed, my mind was made up.”

After a blank first day, Steve risked spodding out 3kg of trout pellets and 40 chopped boilies, before casting out his Mainline boilie tight to the weed. A few hours later he got the reward he was looking for. “I had a tenchlike bite,” said Steve, “I struck and the fish rolled against the bank of weed. It was obviously a big carp. It dragged a load of weed about for 25 minutes before Nigel slipped the net under a massive ball of weed and fish. When we parted the weed we realised it was Heather, and up went the customary shout!”