This is probably the most prestigious team event in the UK, which is incredibly difficult to qualify for and even harder to compete against the top class line up. My team Browning Wickford had qualified by finishing 3rd on the Kennet & Avon canal back in March. Being realists we were aiming for a top half finish in the final, however apart from Dorking, Barnsley and Trentmen I felt the outcome would be difficult to predict and as a result a decent finish could be up for grabs for any team which sorted the venue out.
The final is held on the River Nene in and around Peterborough town centre and coincides with the "Tacklefest" show which means plenty of spectators on the bank. The layout of the venue is first class with fantastic access for competitors and spectators and there really is a buzz around the place at the draw. There are not many matches with spectators so this puts a bit of extra pressure on all competitors.
To say the practice matches had been patchy was probably being generous. I had taken part in all 3 and in 2 I had drawn the North Bank and in 1 the Middleholme Section. To get straight to the point the North Bank had been utterly diabolical for 99% of people during the practice sessions. There were no roach to be caught and almost no bream, not to mention hardly any bleak. The only fish being caught were small Perch and the odd eel. Consequently any weight over a pound from the North bank was absolutely mega during practice. On the first practice match I drew in the 70s on the North Bank and after 3 hours had caught 1 perch and was joint top in my section. However, I eventually lost the will to live and packed up early and walked the entire match length with Danny Grimsey. The second practice match again saw me draw the North Bank and I had a mega day catching 7 perch for 13 ounces, unfortunately I missed out on the section which was won by Ian Didcote with 15 ounces! Both matches were not aided by gail force winds. As you can imagine before the draw at the final practice match I was especially enthused at the possible prospect of another North Bank draw. Fortunately I was spared more pain and drew peg 5 at Middleholme. This turned out to be a really enjoyable day as I caught lots of small roach and hybrids on the long pole with bloodworm and bleak on the short pole for a total of 4lbs 10 and a half ounces. This was 3rd or 4th im section. I felt I'd learnt quite a bit and went into the final with some optimism.
The sections in the match were as follows:
A and B Railworld
C and D The Embankment
E and F Middleholme.
G,H,I,J The North Bank.
With it being the final my only concern was securing good points for the team, however if I'm honest I would have preferred a day not seeing the North Bank. Conditions in the 2 weeks leading up to the match had seen heavy rain and the river was certainly flowing more than it had been, yet mysteriously still remained crystal clear?? The weather on the day was very hot, still and high pressure. Poor conditions for fishing any natural venue.
The Draw
The problem with match fishing is you don't get to pick your peg and almost inevitably I was handed H section which was a third of the way down the North Bank. It was now a case of trying to get maximum points for the team and which meant the quality of the fishing was irrelevant. Anglers in sections panned out as follows:
Railworld: Keith Austin & Mark Campion.
Embankment: Simon Hodder & Dean Tennant.
Middleholme: Paul Chambers & Danny Grimsey.
North Bank: Peter Steward, myself, Steve Joy & Dave Guntrip.
The draw is discussed ......My Peg
If anyone hasn't seen the North Bank of the Nene they are not missing much, its certainly not one of the wonders of the world. It is a dead straight almost featureless piece of water (except for lots of weed) and is about 25 metres wide in most places. The only exception is the area where wires go across the water and these pegs are notorious bream fiers. The one good thing about it is the road which runs parallel with the river, which means you can park behind your peg.
My peg was in the section before the wires so I didn't have to worry about the flyers. The first thing I noticed about it was the amount of weed I would have to contend with. It was solid for about 6 metres so the first job was to clear some of it out. I had learnt in practice it was important to have a clear channel in front of you for 3 reasons. Firstly, you could catch tiny fish under your feet in a gap in the weed, and every fish would be vital on the North Bank. Secondly, when shipping out olivette rigs if you didn't have a clear spot you would hook up on shite on the way out and thirdly if a big fish was hooked you would have more chance of landing it if there wasn't six metres of thick weed in front of you! An old indestructable pole was used with a weedcutter to cut out the peg and I soon had a clear channel.
Groundbait
My grounbait had been mixed the night before and was equal portions of Browning River, Gardons, canal and brown crumb. Also, added to this was a bag of damp leam to help it break down and some VDE Pigeon Shit (which would hopefully attract lots of dog roach!). This totalled 4 kilos. We all had 3/4 of a kilo of joker and bloodworm of various sizes, but mainly small. The joker was the bollocks and was either Polish or English as it was big, lively and easy to hook. My initial feed was to throw 12 orange sized balls at 14.5 metres containing 250 mls of joker with a few pinkies and casters. I had 2 kilos of top up mix which consisted of Sensas Terre de Rivierre and grey leam. This would simply deliver jokers. At 4 metres in a gap in the weed I would feed 2 soft joker rich balls which would probably in all honesty just catch tiny fish and maybe an odd bonus perch. At 8 metres which was the bottom of the near shelf I fed a 50;50 mix of soil and groundbait in 4 balls with 100mls of joker, again I was hoping for Perch here as well. I also had a bag of Sensas Ablettes knocked up with a third of a bag of "Terre de Surface Jaune" (yellow surface leam) added to aid clouding this was mixed into a slop and would be fed for bleak at about 9 metres down my peg. So thats over 7 kilos of groundbait mixed up when I expected to struggle to catch a 1lb!!!
Rigs
With the river flowing harder than in practice a multitude of rigs were gonna be needed to cover all eventualities. My rig for 4 metres was a 0.3 gram Sensas Jean Francois for fishing 4 feet deep and featured 0.09 Browning Cenitan to an 0.07 hooklength and a 22 B511 hook. Elastic was a 3.
At 8 metres I had 2 rigs assembled, both featuring Browning Nevis floats in 1 gram and 1.5 grams. I could hold back hard with 1.5 grams on this line in the depth of 9 feet. Line was 0.12 to an 0.08 hooklength to a size 20 Mustad Wide Gape Canal Seed hook. A bulk of number 8s was used on the gram rig with 4 number 10 droppers set at equal intervals below this. There was about 20 inches between the bulk and the hook. The 1.5 gram rig was shotted similarly below the olivette, except for the droppers being number 9's. Elastics were 4 on both rigs.
14.5 metres was my main line in approximately 11 feet of water which was also in the main flow and I had 4 rigs for this line. Again lines were 0.12 to 0.08 to 20 WGCS's. Rig 1 was a 1 gram "Perfect" Pencil float which had a carbon stem and a fine fibre bristle and featured shot instead of an olivette. This rig would only be used if it stopped tanking. Other rigs were 1.5 grams and 2.5 gram Nevis' shotted with olivettes and droppers as per the other rigs. I could just about ease the 2.5 rig through with the flow when setting up which was a considerably more flow than we had had during pactice. Number 5 elastics were used on these rigs. My final rig was a Bream rig, which was ridiculously optimistic, but if they turned up I had to be prepared. This featured a 3 gram Sensas Bogdan flat float and enabled me to hold my rig dead still overdepth. Lines were 0.12 to 0.10 and the hook was a 16 WGCS which would take bunches of 5 bloodworm. The only irritant was a layer of fine silk weed which seemed to cling to the hook on every drop in with this rig.
The Match
After the initial bombardment it was team tactics to get straight out on the 14.5 metre line and try to snare an early bream or skimmer. A bunch of bloodworm went onto the hook and the rig was lowered in and held dead still over the groundbait. After 10 minutes of no response it was time to have a quick look at 8 metres and after 5 minutes of running the 1 gram through I was still biteless. The sun was now very bright and strong and to my shock I could make out my groundbait on the bottom at 14.5 metres!!! the only consolation of this was I felt my balling was pretty accurate! It became obvious that this math was to be a grueller and I had to get a fish in the net.
Me watching a motionless float!Under my feet at 4 metres I could see tiny fish swimming over my 2 balls of groundbait and a single bloodworm on the hook soon bought a couple of 1/4 of an ounce roach. At least I now had a point! I looked down again and could see a slightly bigger fish down there, I put a pinkie on and soon had a perch of about an ounce in the net. At this point I began feeding for bleak at 7/8 metres down my peg. I didn't expect to catch but had to try feeding it with things looking grim. Dorkings Gary Hamilton was running my section and confirmed my section was fishing desperately with 2 perch being top and many people still fishless.
Over the next couple of hours I switched between all of my lines in search of fish and eventuality caught a few more small roach at 8 metres. The bleak option failed dismally as I could only catch tiny fry here which were absolutely useless, so I abandoned this totally. With bankside word being the top weight int section of 8 ounces I decided I had to concentrate on the fish under my feet and 8 metres as these were the only lines that had produced at that point in the match. My concentration only being broken by a cow falling into the river and only just about managing to keep its head above water. After 10 minutes of commotion it eventuality managed to drag itself out. This probably wouldn't have helped the nerves of any bream in the area!
These small fish under my feet were not even that easy to catch, I seemed to catch 4 or 5 before the shoal would drift off and I would have to feed a small ball f groundbait and leave the line alone before they would come back. After 3 and a half hours no more fish had come off the 8 metre line, therefore I decided to put 2 joker rich balls of soil in to hopefully kickstart some activity. Again Gary confirmed that our section was still fishing appallingly with noone admitting to a pound. In fact our teams runner Alex Reynolds confirmed the whole venue was fishing rock hard.
By the end of the match I had finished up with 2 one ounce perch and 50-60 tiny roach mainly from under my feet. I felt I may have a pound and Gary Hamilton reckoned this would be good. However, we all know how match anglers lie so we would just have to await the scales. One bad bit of news for me in my section was the fact that Stevie Gardner had caught an eel of a pound with minutes of the match remaining to elevate him from near bottom to near the top! Its amazing how these top anglers conjure up big fish with such regularity when they really need them most! I guess its total confidenc in what you are doing.
To say the section was close would be an understatement. In the end my 1 pound 8 drams got me joint 5th in my 14 man section. I was more than happy with this as I fely had done the job for the team and the poor fishing didn't matter at this point. The section was won with 1lb 8ounces and Steve finished 2nd or 3rd with the help of his eel.
It was time to switch the phone on and see how the rest of the lads had fared. Overall, we had more poor results than good and there was one especially gruesome tale which involved catching but not weighing in ...... yep strange but true. Our best performer was Keith Austin who had managed 4th in section from Railworld. Dean Tennant had also done well with a 5th from the Embankment. Unfortunately, it went downhill from here and it became obvious a top half finish was out of the question. To be honest I was too depressed to listen to the results too intensely but believe we finished 11th out of 14. Dorking had turned in another top notch team performance and won comfortably with Barnsley second and Trentmen 3rd. Our London winter league rivals Image put in a fantastic performance and finished 4th, proving that hard work and commitment does get it rewards. A lesson we need to learn as a team if we want to compete in these sort of events. They also had the bonus of producing the individual winner in Tony Marti who caught Bream on the wires peg.
Dean Tennant done well to finish 5th from the embankment
Paul Chambers slips a gear!
Danny Grimsey finished 6th in section.My thoughts on the Venue
Firstly I think Ken Wade runs a really slick match and his organisation cannot be faulted. The layout of the venue is first class and it really is ideal for hosting a big match with few long walks and fantastic spectator access. There is no mud and the tacklefest and the fishing run perfectly side by side.
Its not all rosy though because a massive factor has got to be the quality of the fishing, as this is what really makes the final. Personally, I drew the North Bank 3 times in total (twice in practice, once in the match) and only broke a pound once. It wasn't my angling incompetance either as nearly everyone near me in these matches had a similar fate or even worse. These matches are not cheap either and I reckon it cost me £80 to fish a match which is crazy money for these sort of returns. I really did feel that there was little reward for making the final of the most prestigious team fishing event in the UK. If I had drawn off the North Bank I would have probably had a different feeling as when I did draw off there I had a good day. Most of the anglers in my section were sitting on a top kit watching "fry" take their bait, surely this is not a true test of their abilties as anglers?
I'd suggest there a few ways in which things could be improved. Firstly, it is widely accepted that most natural venues are patchy in June and July, yet come August and September these same venues suddenly become alive with seemingly an endless supply of feeding roach. I know that the East Midlands Angling Times Winter League has a round in early October on the Nene and there are lots of double figure roach catches in this match and thats without the use of bloodworm and joker. I don't know whether there is a reason preventing a change of date?
Secondly, the North Bank was well below par this year and was in the last final I fished (2006 I think). The Nene is a big river and perhaps these 4 sections could be relocated elsewhere. I don't know the Nene well at all but maybe there is some better fishing above railworld, or slightly further out of town. These matches are seriously expensive to fish and anything to improve the fishing would be positive. However, I do think the rest of the venue provides good challenging fishing and the North Bank is just the problem.
I know people have been discussing moving it to a commercial and I don't believe it would tarnish the competition at all if it was moved. After all the majority of match fishing these days is done on commercials and it would therefore just reflect modern matchfishing. With many leagues dying and struggling for teams, this change may give the competition an added boost. There are rumours of Cudmore, but we'll just have to wait and see. Anyway, the winter leagues will begin again soon and i'll be looking forward to doing it all again and hopefully helping the team to qualify for the final again whereever its held!
