FISH O’ FINAL A TRIUMPH FOR THE ‘OTHER’ FAMOUS ANDY!
May, not Murray, held off serious competition to win this
CROWDS put off by the bad weather missed perhaps the greatest Fish O’Mania final ever.
Andy May drew the right area and knows the place inside out but Kerry Kirkwood, Rob Minnikin, Ian Giddins and the impressive young Essex angler Ross Harrold did all they could to beat him, and it was very close.
The fishery team at Cudmore have done a superb job of transforming Arena Lake. Ageing carp and barbel were taken out and replaced with quality bream and skimmers, barbel grown on site to around 250g, ide and, recently, the accursed F1s, plus a few smaller carp.
Unless you watched the match on Sky Sports you won’t see the physical effort, concentration and professionalism shown by all the competitors. The heart monitors they all wore bore testament to the effort, and the anglers talked to us in the commentary box live via radio mics and earpieces, realying their tactics. We even had Ross and Andy telling each other what was happening from opposite sides of the lake... Andy, in his usual way, telling Ross he was catching “on prawn, shalla.”
Andy has worked with the Sky team on Fish O’, demonstrating what is happening around the lake, for a few years now and he was almost apologetic when he phoned producer, Mick Brais, to tell him he’d qualified for the semi-final. So it was like one of our own had won and we were all chuffed for him... especially me, as I drew peg 5 in the Sky sweep, my first good draw for years.
I’m not sure whether the new format worked but if Matchroom and the Angling Trust are to even come close to satisfying the almost insatiable demand for tickets there has to be some kind of structure to have more qualifiers. I understand the matter is already on the table, and I expect news quite soon.