Interservices Championship, Heronbrook

This event started with nearly a week’s worth of practice, this saw me fishing on Bridge peg 9(twice), Canal 11 and 15, Match 35 and Meadow 13. This period saw weights from 56-96lb on a variety of tactics across the lakes and included a day’s pleasure fishing on Match that saw me mug out 4 carp for around 60lb.

But to the event itself, the Inter services is a competition between the Army, RAF and Navy and this year it was being run by the current holders the Navy, the Army had not won the trophy since 2005 at Porth Reservoir and since we knew the venue well this was seen as our best chance of picking up the trophy for the last couple of years.

I had Meadow 4 drawn out of the bag for me and this gave me just over 13m to a gap in the far bank reeds that was about 2 ½ feet deep, this depth could be found in a few other spots along the far bank as well. I set up a 4X12 Big H Border float on 0.15mm mainline and a 0.13mm hook length with an 18 B911 attached to the end, this was set up on yellow Vespe E2 hollow elastic on a pull bung. I set up a 2+2 corn rig and a paste rig to go on the same line and a deep margin rig to fish at 13m down the lake to my left but all I had from these lines was a small Tench.

At the all in we had planned a bit of deception so the whole team potted in either nothing or as in my case 6 pellets and a bit of water in their biggest pot across. This worked and the RAF angler pegged on peg 1 potted in a whole pot of maggot across on to his far line, then the same again down the edge and other spots. I put a bit of hemp and corn in on my 2+2 line and also the same on my margin line before I shipped across to my far line and kinder cupped in a few micros. It took about 3 minutes for my first bite that led to a Gudgeon but after a few more minutes I started to put a few F1’s into the net. By the end of the first hour though the wind was worsening and I was about 10lb adrift from the peg to my left who had had a couple of decent carp early before his constant dumping of maggots saw him losing a few foul hookers. With this in mind I decided to move swims a few feet to my left under a canopy of reeds and this saw a marked improvement in sport, I started to pick up F1’s and small carp quite regularly for the rest of the match and it was only when I wanted to take a break from the wind that I would try my margin or 2+2line.

After 5 hours of fishing I had ended up with 16 Carp, a couple of Gudgeon, about 25 F1’s and a small Tench for a combined weight of 83lb 4oz, this saw me nearly double the next best weight in my 3 man section for a comfortable section win and also take 4^th overall in the match. The Army won with 7 section wins and a total of 18 points, we also had the top 4 individuals all from the same lake, Meadow. All in all a very good day.