ANDY LEFT FEELING ‘GRAND’ AFTER BIG FINAL WIN
Power takes second Viaduct crown in a row
ANDY Power has the habit of being a man for the big moment.
The Preston Innovations ace already had a string of bigmoney wins under his belt when he scored another one last weekend by topping the Bait-Tech Viaduct Fishery All Winners Final for the second year running. He pocketed the £1,000 top prize against some very strong competition.
Last year saw the Wells, Somerset, man take victory on Cary Lake, but 12 months later he was on Campbell at the Somerton fishery, drawing peg 129. He didn’t really fancy it, but six hours later he was tipping 206-13-0 on to the scales to win by over 50lb from Phil Hardwick.
“Peg 129 can be hit-and-miss and I didn’t rate it, but on Campbell you can win off a lot of pegs and I thought that I was at least on the right lake, looking at how the place had been fishing,” said the former UK Champion and Match This winner.
“I hadn’t fished Viaduct for a month or thereabouts, so I didn’t have a plan based on up-to-date information. I decided to feel my way in with pellet and meat and go from there.
“The peg does have a spit of land sticking out to around 14m on the left and I know this can hold a lot of carp, so I used this as my main line, potting in hemp and corn and fishing hair-rigged 8mm meat on the hook just off the end of the spit,” he continued. “It was slow to begin with – I think after four hours I had around 60lb but in a six-hour match there was more chance of the fish getting their heads down late on, and that’s what happened. It wasn’t a fish
“It wasn’t a fish a chuck in the last few hours of the match but it was steady”
a chuck in the last few hours but it was steady, feeding a small pot after every fish.”
Andy’s fish averaged around 8lb so it didn’t take him long to build a weight in those closing stages. The champ finished with 25 carp for his weight, all taken on 0.19mm Powerline mainline to a 0.15mm hooklink, a size 16 KKM-B hook and 13 Hollo elastic finished off with a 4x12 Des Shipp Margin float. Result: 1 A Power, Preston Innovations, 206-13-0 2 P Hardwick, Burt Baits, 153-5-0 3 J Billett, Bait-Tech Viaduct, 148-3-0 4 G O’Shea, Preston Innovations Thatcher’s, 147-10-0 5 B White, Garbolino Spotted Fin, 131-4-0 6 D Squires, M5 Angling, 120-12-0