Pat Poulton is still weighing in with some impressive catches even though he stopped playing rugby some 20 years or so ago.

The 57-year-old, who is a very keen angler, recently caught the biggest ever barbel on the River Severn.

It weighed in at 17lb 12oz – some three ounces bigger than the previous best – and he said: “I had a very good two days because I caught six barbel in total.”

Cheltenham-born Poulton was fishing in Gloucestershire – he won’t give away the precise location because he doesn’t want others flocking there – and has always been keen on fishing even though he is probably best known around the county for his time as a rugby player with Old Patesians back in the 80s and 90s.

The retired builder moved to Devon some 15 years ago – he lives with his wife Sue in Kingsbridge – but it was in his home county that he first got the fishing bug.

“It was when I was 12 or 13,” he said. “I used to cycle from Cheltenham to Tewkesbury with my friend Graham Wills. We’d fish at Healings Mill and I don’t think I ever stopped fishing even when I was playing rugby.

“I used to get up for an angling match on the Sunday after playing rugby on the Saturday and I’d still be drunk from the night before!”

In those days Poulton fished for Walker Crossweller and he has obviously been quite successful over the years.

So what is the secret to being a good angler?

“You’ve got to be in the right place,” he said with some understatement.

And he was in the right place for much of the time during his rugby career. At his peak he was an all-action no 8 but he could also play in the second row and, at the end of his career, in the front row.

He was part of the Pats team that enjoyed such success in the 80s and 90s and was team manager when they won the Intermediate Cup at Twickenham in 2001.

He also spent three years at Cheltenham, so which sport does he prefer, rugby or angling?

“The fishing is now a very big part of my life but when I played rugby I was obsessed with it,” he said.

“The fishing is a great escape. I watch the wildlife go by, I watch the world go by.”

It couldn’t be more different than the game of rugby, a sport Poulton first started playing when he was at Bournside School.

And he must have been pretty good at it because Pats stalwart Taff Powell – a teacher at Bournside – got him up to the club where he joined the junior section and where he played alongside the likes of fellow back row Paul Kingscott, who he describes as a “super player”.

Poulton was initially a second row but says the best years of his career were at no 8.

So how did he end up in the front row?

“Somebody thought it would be a good idea to push me forward,” he said, “we were short of a prop at the time.”

And typically it was something that Poulton took in his stride.

“I rose to the challenge,” he said, “I enjoyed myself.”

So what sort of rugby player was he?

“There’s a lot more skill today,” he said. “In my day it was brute force and ignorance, I’m not sure if it’s gone the right way.”

He has no involvement with rugby these days, but as well as his fishing he is also big into racing cars.

“I’ve got a little Westfield kit car and I take it to track days,” he said. “It’s like a go-kart and it goes fast – 120mph which is quick enough to scare you!”

Clearly Poulton hasn’t lost that competitive edge.