Army Carp fishing Final

I was lucky enough to have been selected to represent the UK Army Carpers in the Army team finals and for this it meant a trip down to the Iconic Wraysbury 1 complex near Heathrow. 

 I had been selected for the A team which consisted of myself, the Pauls, Ant, John and my partner Gav.

We all arrived on the Monday and managed to get a few laps of the North lake under our belt as this was going to be the venue for the next couple of days. Between us Gav and I had spotted several areas where there were numbers of fish and I really fancied and open water peg or an island chuck for the best chance of a couple of bites, so when we finally came out of the draw bag we decided, well I decided on peg 13.

The swim gave us a couple of islands and a bit of open water on the left hand side and on the right there was a large bay and open water area. Gav took the left and the island, I had the right and the bay, I was more than happy with this though as the night before I had been watching fish head and shoulder all night in the area and they were still there in morning.  Rupert the head bailiff was around soon after we got to the swim and gave us a few spots to try and I Gav was fishing tight to the island whilst I had a hole in the weed at 15 wraps and a gravel spot in the margin at 21 wraps down to the right.

We put a bit of bait in on the spots and settled in, unfortunately for 46 hours that was all we could do as apart from a few liners there was no action on any of our rods, we tried all over the swim with a variety of tactics and come the last morning I was fishing a PVA bag over the spodded open water spot with 2 grains of fake corn on the hair. Low and behold I had a bite and as I lifted into the rod there was weight for a split second and then nothing as the 3 oz lead and size 5 ESP Gripper failed to make good contact to the fish.

  We were gutted, as you can see from the photo, the lead had discharged and there was nothing wrong with the rig so I have no idea how it got away with it!!

Gp 9 manged to win both top pair and the group match and one of the lads managed to catch one of the originals at well over 35lb!!

What would I have done differently?

I think I became preoccupied with the gravel spot to my right and perhaps a more area based attack would have been better. But hopefully there will be next year.

Tackle used:

Rods: 13ft 3.5lb tc Free spirit CTX

Reels: Shimano 14000 Ultegra XTC

Line: 15lb ESP Syncro loaded 16lb Fox TransKaki Flouro