Report from World Feeder Champs
Eighth place for the team, individual silver
BEFORE they headed off to do battle, Preston Innovations England Feeder team boss Tommy Pickering admitted that the 2017 World Champs in Portugal would be no pushover.
And so it proved. The River Raia served up a hard match which saw the team finish a disappointing eighth. Italy took the gold with what for a World Champs was a big score of 65 points.
Hopes were high for a medal among the team, and when you look at the results, a mere 10 points separated England from a silver medal. On a river where one carp was worth mega points, just one bite would have seen a very different picture.
But the cold truth is that this result is way below the high standards England set themselves.
Even the comfort of an individual silver medal for Mick Vials and fourth spot for Phil Ringer couldn’t cushion the desolation felt by Tommy and the team as they headed home.
“We were under no illusions that this was going to be a tough World Champs, and when you see that 79 points was needed to win a medal, you can see just how tough it was,” Tommy said.
“I can point to a couple of things that were the key difference. The first was that in B section there were a few pegs with trees growing out into the river from the far bank. To catch carp you needed to cast tight to the bank, and we drew those trees both days and never really stood a chance.
“If Rob Wootton or Dean Barlow had drawn a few pegs either side of these I know they’d have caught carp and the result would have been very different.
“The second thing was the issue of not filling feeders to fish for bleak,” he continued.
“I’ve always believed that feeder fishing is about using groundbait and so on, not chucking an empty feeder in and out and waiting for a fish to grab the bait. We found out on Friday that this would be allowed but, of course, we hadn’t practised fishing this way, so it was all a bit confusing. To be frank, the rules need sorting out. It’s not an excuse, because it was the same for everyone, but we would just like to have been told at the start of the practice. Other teams seemed to know about this, as they were on it in practice!”
Day one was a bit of a disaster as Steve Ringer and Rob Wootton scored 18 points apiece. Adam Wakelin totalled 13 and Mick Vials had a second in section and Phil Ringer a win to give them 52 points.
That meant the team were up against it and had to claw back massive points on Sunday.
“We decided after day one that we had to attack and catch carp, forgetting the bleak,” Tommy revealed. “It almost worked, as Phil and Adam were third in their sections, Mick won his and Steve was eighth – but poor old Dean drew those trees and came last in section. One pull and a carp from him and we’d have a medal, that’s how close it actually was.
“In that final hour on Sunday we seemed to go backwards and couldn’t catch big fish. Up until that point we were in contention
and I was happy. We scored 37 points, which was more like it, but it was ultimately a bit too much to overhaul.”
England’s plan was to fish two carp lines tight across and a few yards off the bank using stickymag feeders and corn on the hook, plus a barbel line down the middle with corn, hemp and soil. Maggots on the hook could catch, but with bleak a problem, corn and worm became the baits.
“The bleak could be caught around 6m out on an underarm cast and we caught plenty of fish using groundbait, but it wasn’t as quick as not filling the feeder, which other teams did,” Tommy said. “They were fishing heavy feeders and short hooklinks, casting and then winding in, almost winding the bleak on to the hook. We fished totally differently to them and it wasn’t as good.
“However, it is what it is and our run of winning team medals comes to an end as we always said it would. It makes the team want it all the more in 2018.
“The whole squad were
brilliant across the week and it so nearly came off for us.
“Eighth looks bad, but it was actually a lot closer than that and I don’t think we did anything majorly wrong in terms of tactics – we were just a couple of pulls on the tip shy of getting a medal,” Tommy added.
Team result: 1 Italy, 65pts; 2 Romania, 79 (36-173); 3 Serbia, 79 (31-105); 4 Germany, 80; 5 Belarus, 81; 6 Netherlands, 83; 7 Ireland, 84.5; 8 Preston Innovations England, 89; 9 South Africa, 98; 10 Spain, 109.5; 11 Belgium, 115; 12 Ukraine, 117.5; 13 Portugal, 118 (23-484); 14 Hungary, 118 (18-118); 15 Moldova, 136; 16 Sweden, 142; 17 France, 144 (20-058); 18 Czech Republic, 144 (14-529); 19 Bulgaria, 148; 20 Lithuania, 143; 21 Russia, 167.5; 22 Austria, 178.