J Sainsbury’s National Angling Championships 2004.
Down to Gold Valley today for the annual J Sainsbury National Angling Championships.
This is a match that has been pretty good to me, over the last 6 years I’ve had 4 top 5 finishes.
The match is open to all Sainsbury’s employees and members of their staff association. I qualify as Maria (Mrs M) works for them and I’m a paid up member of their staff assocciation.
Normally this is a 110 peg match, but this year only 80 entries had been recieved so the match was pegged on Syndicate, Middle and Bungalow Lakes. The weather forcast for the day promised sunshine and showers, but on the drive down there was nothing but blue skies and bright sunshine although the wind was quite cold and blustery.
I arrived at 7am in plenty of time for breakfast in the clubhouse that is laid on as part of the day, and after that it was time to get the nets dipped and collect my bait from the onsite tackle shop before returning for the draw.
Into the pot and peg 114 on Syndicate was my alloted spot for the day. I was quite chuffed with the draw as pegs 110 – 114 have a gravel bar to fish to that is about 25ft short of the ropes that run down the middle of the lake to stop anglers casting past ½ way, and once the weather warms up the carp normally move onto this bar.
With an 11am start there was plenty of time to set up, so the feeder was set up to fish to the bar, set up on a snap swivel so that I could easily swop feeder size, or from a cage to a maggot feeder if needed. The pole lines were simplicity themselves as the bottom was perfectly flat and level from 3mtrs out all the way to 14mtrs with a depth of around 6ft. 3 rigs were set up, 1 at depth, 1 at a foot deep and a third that I could adjust to fish between the two. 1 other rig was set up for the margins that still had 3½ft of water, and would hopefully produce some lumps in the later part of the match.
All the while I was setting up I hadn’t seen a single fish move which is unusual on Syndicate, and with 45 minutes to the off I went for a walk around. Reaching the end pegs 99 -102 it was soon obvious where the fish were!!! sheltered and calm these pegs were alive with fish and those anglers in them all had large grins on their faces.
11am and the all in, and with a large cage feeder 20 casts were made to the bar to put a bed of groundbait down on it. Then out on the pole with a couple of balls of groundbait with pellet, corn and grated meat at 5mtrs and 12mtrs to see if there were any silvers about.
The lad to my left started on the waggler and the one to my right was on the feeder. A slow start all round and after the 1st hour I just had 6 Roach, then the lad to my right had a Carp on the feeder which he lost at the net. Out onto the bar with the feeder and a piece of hair rigged meat. The lad to my right had another Carp which looked close to double figures as he netted it which was followed by another next cast. Despite swapping between meat, maggot and corn all I was getting was the odd minute tap in the next 2 hours which resulted in another couple of Roach.
2 hours to go and the tip pulled firmly round and kept going, something had picked up the piece of meat and after a spirited fight, there in the net was a nice double figure Common Carp. “Here we go” I thought, WRONG!!!! Not another bite for the rest of the match! Just before the end the lad to my left had a large Mirror on the waggler, a good double, but placing it into his keepnet it flipped back into the lake. The language to say the least was industrial!!!!!!
The end of the match came, and I knew that I’d come nowhere even in my section, so I tipped back about 5lbs of silvers when the scales arrived. Talking to the scalesmen it appears that this year for some reason not a single decent weight had come from this swim this year which even they can’t understand (Now they tell me!) I got them to weigh the Common as they were there and it went 11lbs 2ozs, so I probably had about 16lbs in total.
The Winner? he had 102lbs from end peg 101 and reckoned that he had lost as much again.
Back to the clubhouse for the presentations, with a buffet and bar laid on it soon became apparent that the complex as a whole hadn’t fished up to expectations. Having said that if it was easy we would probably get bored. I’ll just have to try harder next year.
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