My first Practice saw me getting onto the lake on a cold and wet Saturday, I set up on Permanent peg 59 and decided to fish the method in a variety of places around the swim. I started in a small cut out in a tree on the far bank, moving onto a baited area about halfway across to my left and I finished down my right hand margin, all produced fish and the biggest was about 8lb. My total of 10 fish was well down on what people were expecting but I felt as though I had extracted the best from the swim on the day as a match going on to my left all the anglers were struggling as well.
My second practice was with the rest of the team and this time Paul was with me, we both set up in Peg 71 as we felt that it would give us a good idea as to how our zone would fish, we had been given the river mouth end of the lake to target. It turned out to be harder than the time before and I managed about 8 fish most of which came in the last hour or so, I also had to fish tight into some snags on the far bank to get bites during the day so that was not ideal.
Here are the two biggest both well into double figures:
The team plan had been formed and it was now the time to prepare, as you can see we all took alot of time to prepare and each angler had around 200-300 small pva bags of pellet ready tied and also 20-30 hook lengths all ready to go. The plan was to fish small bags, small hooks and longish mono hook lengths to try and overcome the silt.
The big day was soon upon us and a slight twist saw the draw format being the team drawn first could pick their peg choice for all three sections, Tim was lucky enough to be called up first and we had swim C in all four sections. For Paul and I we were well happy as we were sat on an absolute flyer in that we sat in pegs 72 and 73 and had about and acre of lake in front of us and a reedy bay to our right which was fed by the river.
I was sat in peg 72 so I had a huge snag tree on the far bank which was going to be my banker but to start I fished away from it to see if I could bag a couple of early fish.
The answer was no and after a couple of fruitless hours I was soon putting a rod over tight to the trees, and that was the turning point of my match, by the end of the first day I had around a hundred pounds of Carp in the net and Simmo had managed a few from the end peg as well so we were smashing up our section before we had even started. I managed a fish of 16lb just on dusk but simmo had a peach at over 21lb a couple of hours later.
And so it continued, we had a quiet spell between midnight and 3 AM where nothing happened but then in just over 5 hours I managed 12 fish for 101lb, Simmo managed to land a couple but he was suffering badly with lost fish in his snag pit of a swim. After breakfast however, fortunes swapped and it was my turn to start loosing fish from under the far bank tree, and I lost alot of fish that day. It ended up that I beefed up my hooklength from 0.24mm powerline (about 11lb) to 15lb mainline in an attempt to stop myself from getting cut off on the snags and it worked to be fair as I hardly lost a fish from under the tree after the change.
I decided at about midnight that I would try to have a bit of sleep for the first time since before the start of the match, however, the carp had other ideas as I managed to have 3 from swims that I thought I would not get a run off, oh well, I could sleep when I got home.
That night it was another 10 carp this time for a weight of 77lb and I had to get the angler in the next peg to witness my fish as I was running out of room again in my nets.
This was the last morning and I had a slow finish really with only 3 bites and 3 fish to show for the last 3 hours but it had been fun up until the packing up tired bit.. Sorry Paul and Josh :-)
We had managed to amass around 650lb of fish between the two of us, I think I had 409lb ( well it rings a bell) but by this time I was too tired to care, the Navy had managed just over a ton and the RAF limped in with tales of lost fish, well there was a big snag in their peg we had warned then about, with just less than a ton.
We as a team met back up at the car park and as the results started to filter back to us we realised that we had actually managed to win the match, Dave and Jimmy had top weight, Paul and I were 3rd and Paul also bagged the biggest fish with his 21lber.
Next year it is off to B2 so I shall have to make sure that I get selected again to try and help retain the title.
Well in all the team and many thanks to the runners and everyone who wished us luck and helped with tactics before the big day.
What would I do different?
I should have realised earlier that I needed to beef up my hook lengths especially after loosing a couple of fish but it is easy when you are not trying to bag up to say that.
Tackle used:
Far bank:
Rods: 13ft 3.5lb tc Free spirit CTX
Reels: Shimano 14000 Ultegra XTC
Line: 15lb ESP Syncro loaded
Short line:
Rods: 10ft 2.75lb TC Dwarf
Reels: Daiwa 4012 TDM
Line: 12lb ESP Syncro loaded
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