The bank holiday Monday August team match is the finale of
the Evesham Festival and consists of fourteen teams, which are a mixture of
invited and qualifying teams. My team Maver Image were fortunate enough to be
one of the invited ones, fortunate, as qualifying for this final is not a
straight forward prospect. It is a great event as there is tackle show, a
bookie and other entertainment occurring in the Crown Meadow behind the early
numbers. These attractions draw a decent head of spectators, with the prospect
of seeing some competitive team angling to boot.
The standard of the teams and anglers is extremely good with
many of the current (and past) Drennan Team England squad on show. The top
teams in the country were all present and the ‘Big 3’ of Dorking, Starlets and
Barnsley were all there. In fact it was actually a ‘Big 4’ as Starlets had 2
teams entered! The only thing to put a literal dampener on the day was the
weather, with persistent rain making it uncomfortable for anglers and
spectators alike.
The interesting thing about this match was the small team
size (teams of five) as opposed to the usual eight or ten man teams. One way of
looking at this is that the ‘smaller’ teams could put out a stronger team as
less strength in depth is required, but on the flip side the ‘big’ teams could
put out an uber strong team of superstars. So I’m not sure if this was to the
benefit or detriment to any of the teams. Our team of five was Gary Miller,
Peter Vasey, James Drakulic, Danny Grimsey & myself. We also had our team
manager Syd Wilson and squad member John Weeden to run the bank. The team was
picked firmly with bloodworm fishing in mind and was arguably our strongest
five anglers at this. We have all done loads of bloodworm fishing especially on
hard canals and were hopeful that this would stand us in good stead for this
challenge. Also, Gary Miller is an ex Wychavon Champ and himself and Peter
Vasey have had Evesham success in the past with the original match fishing super
team; Van Den Eyne Essex County.
After looking at the match results of the preceding two days
competitions, it was clear that the fishing was not just hard, but very, very
hard, with countless DNWs and weights of less than a pound on both days. The
river had been very low and clear and coupled with the enormous amount of
angling pressure as well, it appeared to have switched off. There is one big
difference though in that the preceding days matches had all been individual
matches, whereas a team match means that a whole different mind-set and
approach is required.
Ok, so to the most important part of any fishing match, the
draw. Over the years I have become a big believer in luck (in both fishing and
in life in general) playing a massive outcome on one’s path. I am absolutely
convinced that given ten different draw bag scenarios, you’ll get different
results and often HUGELY different results. This is what makes fishing so
unpredictable in that you could possibly have one of the worst match anglers in
the world beating one of the best; if the ‘gods of luck’ are assisting the
lesser angler. Anyway, back to the match and the guys were very keen for me to
do the draw (apparently lucky ...hmmmm…) and with all of this peer pressure I
couldn’t say no. For once we were fairly near to the start of the draw and were
about 5th to draw I think, which gave me the dilemma of lots of
envelopes still to pick. I vividly remember picking one that seemed to be
staring at me and asking me to pick it, as it was slightly on top of one of the
other envelopes. Despite thinking it may be trying to bluff me I picked it and
it turned out to be team draw number 5 and gave us the following sequence of
pegs (I think I've got some of these wrong, my memory is poor!).
Peg 5 – Me
Peg 18 – Peter Vasey
Peg 35 – James DrakulicPeg 49 – Gary Miller
Peg 64 – Danny Grimsey
The obvious stand out peg was peg 35, this was on the mouth
of where the River Isbourne joins the River Avon. On the Saturday it had
produced a winning weight of chub to Lee Edwards who had fished the waggler and
maggots. James Drakulic had drawn this peg and I have seen James at close
quarters over the last few years and at 22 he is an exceptional talent. He has
been for a couple of England trials and has been unsuccessful, which means that
we must have a frighteningly good crop of young anglers in this country if he
cannot get in. Great for the future. Back to peg 35 and it is by no means a
‘gimme’, as the chub do not always show, which was shown by the Sunday result
from this peg. It could actually be a tricky one, because you have to try for
the chub and if they don’t show, you’ll be behind on bloodworm fish for sure. Gary
Miller’s verdict was that it looked like a reasonable draw and Syd Wilson’s ‘dossier’!!!
confirmed the same and we all went away content to our pegs.
My peg was number 5 in Crown Meadow and when I arrived at my
peg, it became evident that we had drawn between Dorking (upstream) and Bait
tech (downstream). More specifically my upstream neighbour was ex World
Champion and Drennan Team England angler William Raison. I’m not sure who the
Bait-tech lad was downstream of me. In fact it transpired that I had three
current England internationals and two World Champions in my section (Sean
Ashby, Lee Kerry and William!). This was as high a standard team match as
anywhere domestically.
Gary Miller had drawn peg 4 on the Saturday Wychavon
Championships and told me that my peg is set out slightly further than peg 4
which would give me an obvious advantage over my neighbour. His overall
consensus was that some of the pegs to my right could be better and also peg
one, as it was an end peg. Whenever I have fished Evesham before I have always
fished off a top four or five, however, this peg was appreciably shallower at
4.5-5 foot and consequently had a small amount of flow. I have to admit that it
looked appealing, despite the water clarity being clear.
Our team mantra was to fish for bites and to keep putting
fish, whatever their size, into the net. Fishing for big fish would only occur
out of desperation. It was clear that they had not been showing the prior two
days, so we were not stacking the odds in our favour by fishing for these. Even
though we expected it to be a bloodworm, small fish affair, we all set up lots
of tackle to cover all eventualities. Specifically, I set up a 5m line for
bloodworm, a 13m line for bloodworm, a 14.5m line for hemp, an 11m line down my
peg for chopped worm, a waggler and a maggot feeder/bomb line.
I set up a 0.6 gram rig for five metres, where I fed 50mls
of joker in five balls of 25% ground bait and 75% soil. Here I was simply
hoping to get bites. The 13m line was where I anticipated spending the majority
of my day and here I assembled 2 rigs. Firstly, a positive bulked down 1 gram
olivette rig, which would allow me to see bites quickly and also fish quicker.
I also set up a 0.6 gram rig, should there be more quality fish present and
better presentation being the name of the game. My 14.5m hemp line was a
throwaway line, where I would simply loose feed 8-10 grains of hemp throughout
the day on this line. I was optimistic of catching a few fish on it though as
Gary Miller had 8 late hemp fish from peg 4 on the Saturday. The rig was a 0.4
gram strung out pattern, which was set just off the bottom.
It was nice to have a couple of hours at my peg to set up,
as I am notoriously slow at setting up (and packing up!). Not only was there a
lot of gear to assemble, but it also gave me ample time to run my rigs through
and to get them behaving exactly how I required them too. This boosted my
confidence nicely before the all in.
As the clock ticked towards the 11am start, I made my balls
up in advance for the 13m line. We had discussed that even though the fishing
was rock hard, balling in would still be the way to go, as the initial noise
could draw fish in and give you a flying start. This also fitted into my
previous Evesham experiences, where I have always had an early burst of fish
after balling, before bite less monotony ensued! I balled in 8 jaffas of soil
and ground bait with an 80:20 ratio of soil to ground bait, with just a pinch
of joker in. I then cupped in 8 smaller balls with 125ml of joker in a 60:40
ratio of soil to ground bait. The theory behind this being that the initial
bombardment would provide noise attraction to any fish in the area, with very
little feed in it. The fish would then hone in on the precisely placed 8 balls
of attractive cupped in bait. Right on cue as the match started the heavens
opened and rain of biblical proportions remained for the rest of the day.
First put in on my 13m line I had a bite! ……. which I
missed. Next run through I hooked a fish that immediately came towards the
surface only to be instantly grabbed by a Pike which emerged from the depths in
a blink of the eye! After a brief tussle I was one hook length down and
slightly annoyed. Although, to be fair Syd Wilson’s dossier did mention Pike
were often a problem in this peg so I couldn’t be surprised! Throughout the
first hour I hooked plenty of fish, although most were tiny (about three to the
ounce) which was obviously not the stamp that I was looking for. Every time I
hooked something better it was taken by a Pike and they were even taking some
of my tiny fish, which is really unusual in my experience. The difficulty I was
having was that many of the Pike attacks were occurring directly over my feed,
which meant that I had no chance of steering them away from the jaws of death.
After hour 1, I’d had 6 Pike on and was shipping back like a maniac to try and
land something!
Comparing myself to the others in sight, it seemed like I
was the only one with Pike trouble. The Bait-Tech angler to my right was
catching much better than me. He wasn’t catching quickly, but all of his fish
were of a cracking stamp and unless my eyes deceived me, he’d had a 12 ounce
roach too. William to my left appeared to be catching regularly, but his fish
were tiny in stamp like mine.
At this point I decided that it was time to rest the long
line and switch attention to the short line. Here I topped up with lots of
‘tinies’ over the next 30 minutes, which meant I was very slowly adding weight
to my net. Throughout this time I was metronomically pinging hemp onto my 14.5m
line. Evesham is unique in that every hour a guy walks along asking every
angler what they have caught and from their responses (presumably) tries to
work out a ‘live’ team position, which is subsequently announced over the
tannoy system. The top individuals in each section are also announced, so you
do have a fair idea of what is going on. At this stage the perceived front
runners were the 2 Starlets team and Barnsley. Apart from my 6 Parkdean final
appearances, I rarely get to fish in front of a crowd and today was no
different, as they were all watching William next door!! Quite understandably
though, as he is an international and a World Champion!
Anyway back to the fishing and another try on my 13m line
resulted in plenty of bites, but again from mainly tiny fish. I was now finding
the odd ‘better’ fish of around an ounce which made me feel like my weight was
sort of ticking over. More importantly, I’d sussed out a pike avoidance tactic!
I I bought the fish right upstream before shipping back and I seemed to be
guiding them around old esox, which were seemingly sitting directly in front of
me.
Both of my short and long lines appeared to die half way
through the day and I topped up both with a joker rich ball of soil. To my
surprise, I had a nice burst of slightly better roach and perch on the 5m line,
which again made me feel like I was ticking over. These didn’t last for long
though and I had to keep rotating the long and short bloodworm lines to keep
bites coming. I’d now started to catch a few gudgeon on my long bloodworm line
too, which seemed to be bigger than the micro roach. It’s not often you
describe gudgeon as ‘bonus fish’! I also had a quick look on the hemp line,
although I didn’t have a bite.
The Baitech angler to my right seemed to have slowed up, but
was well ahead of me due to the stamp of fish he had caught early doors,
meanwhile William was still catching the ‘tinies’ and had tried the waggler
without too much success. Team manager Syd has also been up and had delivered
some encouraging news, in that he felt that we were all in the top halves of
our sections, with James Drakulic winning his. It gave me a great boost to hear
that we were in the mix and I was determined to scrape every last dram from my
peg.
There was now only half an hour left and on went a grain of
hemp and out to 14.5 metres of my Browning Z10 pole I shipped. This time something totally different
happened in that the float trundled a few metres downstream before shooting
away and I was attached to a decent fish! Gingerly I guided it upstream fearing
that jaws would grab it any second. Fortunately it didn’t occur and a 6 ounce
red fin was sitting in my net. I always feel that with baits like hemp, getting
the first bite is the hardest thing and so it proved as over the remaining
duration of the match I hooked another 9 hemp fish, landing 6 and losing 3 to
Pike before the all-out sounded. Agonisingly, I’d lost a 4 ouncer in the last
minute of the match to a Pike that snatched it inches from my net! All in all
I’d lost 12 fish to Pike during the match, but I have learnt to be
philosophical about things which are out of your control. Word on the bank was
that the guys to my right, in the middle of the section had caught very well.
Also, Lee Kerry on peg 2 had apparently got a decent weight and I felt that I
may be battling it out for halfway at best.
The tannoy continued to give ‘live’, but now ‘actual’
results as the match was being weighed in and I clearly heard that after the
weighing of the bottom 3 sections we were in the lead, which was brilliant and
slightly unexpected, as the announcer had not mentioned that we were in the
running all day. Anyway, as the scales arrived at me, there had been 3 ‘big’
weights which I had no hope of beating. Adrian Higginbottom on peg 8 with 14lb,
Sean Ashby on peg 15 with 11-4-8 and the Baitech lad downstream of me with 7lb
odd. Adrian and Shaun also took 1st and 2nd in the match
incidentally. I pulled my net out and had loads of fish, but most of which were
tiny. I seemed to have either tiny fish of under half an ounce or fish of over
3 ounces (my 7 hemp fish) and nothing in between, which is very unusual. My
weight of 4-9-8, put me 4th in the section with 3 anglers still to
weigh in, one of which was Lee Kerry on peg 2 who was sure to beat me. Various
people were doing the number crunching and it now appeared that things were
going to be really close between ourselves and Barnsley. William had 2lb odd
upstream of me, whilst Lee weighed in between 8-10lb (I can’t remember) which
pushed me down to 5th in my 14 man section. Things were now really
tight as both Barnsley and Starlets had taken points off me in the section.
Fortunately peg 1 weighed in 3lb odd, which meant that I hadn’t dropped any
further points.
We were all a bit unsure of the final outcome as the tannoy
didn’t seem to continue announcing the results, although various people felt
that we had the verdict by 1 or 2 points. We couldn’t find team manager Syd
Wilson to ask, as he had been noting every result down from the sections …. WHERE
WAS SYD?? Well it transpired that Syd had hot footed it to the bookies as he
knew we’d won and had £20 each way on us at 12/1 and was keen to pick up his
£340 before the bookie did one!!
Our final points tally was 55 points, made up as follows:
James Drakulic 1st 14 points (3rd
overall in match)
Danny Grimsey 3rd 12 points
Gary Miller 5th 10 points
Me 5th 10 points
Peter Vasey 6th 9 points
It goes without saying that we were overjoyed with the
outcome. It also means that the team has had a decent year so far after winning
the Sensas Challenge Final UK qualifier on the Ouse at Littleport in March.
Overall team result:
Maver Image 55 points
Starlets 54 points
Barnsley 51 points
It has since been said that we managed to line up the best
set of pegs, but as everyone knows you need to have lady luck on your side in
match fishing and I’m sure that many team matches are won off of the best draw,
so it’s pretty inconsequential really. Long may it continue!
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