Steve Ringer takes us through his wild fishing week at Ireland’s World Pairs
It was a close-run five-day grueller, but it wasn’t quite our year
THE World Pairs in Ireland is right up there as one of the best events I fish.
Both the scenery and the fishing are amazing, and there’s something special about tackling huge expanses of water and the challenges they present.
Sixty competing pairs are split into five sections of 12 and everyone rotates around the different venues over five days. Winners are decided on weight.
The job on the Sunday night was to draw for rotation. My brother Phil and I had chatted about where we wanted to start, and with the Erne fishing so well on the day’s practice match we felt it important to get on the Erne early.
We reckoned that if it was already fishing well, then it might not hold that form until the end of the week.
My hand went into the draw bag and ‘Rotation 1’ stuck to my hand, which meant we would start on the Erne – perfect!
DAY 1 – A FLYING START
On the first day we headed to the mighty Lough Erne, me on peg 9 on Horse Island and Phil on peg 13 at Innish Fovar, both decent areas.
I left the pole at the digs and went all out on the feeder. With no bait having gone in short I couldn’t see how there’d be a lot of pole fish there this early in the week.
I set up three 12ft Daiwa SLR feeder rods to fish at 50m, which put me further out than those around me – although of course that meant further to wind fish back from. I did have a good plumb around, and I admit I was slightly disappointed it wasn’t deeper, having only a count of seven on a 1.5oz bomb from 35m out.
To my surprise I caught right from the start, although mainly roach and not the required hybrids. That said, they were good fish averaging around 200g apiece.
A late run of decent hybrids was a welcome bonus and I put 25-500 on the scales for a steady start. Phil, too, had plenty of bites to weigh 24kg-plus and we were more than happy with our 49kg.
DAY 2 – TOUGHER TIMES
The draw sent us to what we expected to be the hardest sections – Lough Scur and Haughton’s Shore. Haughton’s seemed to be mainly roach fishing while Scur was more skimmers. Sure enough I found myself off to Haughton’s, while Phil had drawn well at Pump House on Scur. We’d said we’d be happy with 20kg as a pair from these two venues, and with very few feeder fish I felt I was going to have to get my head down on the pole to catch 10kg. I ended up fishing 13m all day both on the deck and shallow to end up with 14-500 of mainly roach. This won me the section and, better still, Phil had an amazing 25kg-plus of skimmers on the short feeder to give us just under 40 kilos on the day.