THE BIG WIN
“I just hope final is still on”
JOHN Hannam is keeping everything crossed that the Fish O’Mania Final in July will go ahead after he top-scored in the event’s second qualifier at Bait-Tech Viaduct Fishery with a 161-2-0 net of carp.
Lining up against 89 other hopefuls at the Somerset complex, South Wales-based John drew peg 113 on Campbell Lake. With an empty swim next door he fished the bomb, long pole and margins with pellet to land carp to 12lb and win a peg-to-peg battle with runner-up Richard Chapman on 147-9-0.
John’s victory will be the last of the Fish O’Mania qualifiers until mid-April as organisers, the Angling Trust, have called a halt to the competition until a clearer picture of Coronavirus emerges. But will Fish O’Mania even go ahead at all?
At the peg
John says: “Peg 112 hadn’t been drawn, and any amount of room on these big qualifiers is a help. The carp on Campbell seemed to have been hanging around pegs 111 and 112 so my hope was that with this space, they’d move up to me. So I began in the margins before going out into open water with the long pole and bomb.
A brilliant start
“With that extra space down to my right, I decided to begin fishing the margins at 16m to see if any early carp were at home, and
in 25 minutes of fishing with a 6mm pellet tight into the bank I’d landed two carp for around 20lb – a dream start. After this, the angler on peg 111 began feeding his margin and the bites stopped, so I came off this line and began to think about the bomb.
On to the bomb
“Dropping the bomb a little shorter than halfway across the lake, I decided to fish and feed two different areas to see if it made a difference. My first swim was slightly off to my right while my other was to the edge of my peg towards vacant peg 112. I fed one with six to eight 8mm pellets regularly and the other with just a couple of pellets each time. In the end, I caught an equal number of carp off both!
“What I did find, though, was that resting a swim did it a world of good and when I went back on it, I always caught a bigger carp. Things slowed down a bit on the bomb, but I was catching enough to make me stay on it.
Time for the pole
“My experience at Viaduct told me that the long pole line always comes good late in the match. With around 90 minutes to go I put the rod down and went out to 16m with a 4x14 rig and a 6mm banded pellet, tapping in six or eight pellets over the top.
“I reckon I waited about five minutes before the float went under and I had my first carp off this line. For the next hour things were fairly steady, with regular bites coming to keep me in contention.
No good in the edge
“I fancied getting a few in the margins in the last half-hour so I did come off the long pole and have a look back at 16m down the bank.
“Eight minutes without the slightest sign of a fish was enough to tell me it wasn’t going to happen here, so I went back on to the long pole for the rest of the match.
The weigh-in
“I’d got around 147lb on my clicker and from what I could gather, it was going to be down to me or Richard Chapman on next-door peg 114, because he’d got 140lb as well.
“The lads on Cary Lake behind me said it had fished hard and at Viaduct, I always feel that this lake is the only other one that can compete with Campbell.
“It was a relief to weigh in 161lb – if my original guess was right, we’d have been ounces apart! Now I must play the waiting game and see if the final goes ahead. I don’t think anybody can predict beyond next week, let alone into the summer.”
RESULT: 1 J Hannam, South Wales, 161-12-0; 2 R Chapman, Spotted Fin, 147-9-0; 3 B Hagg, Guru/Mainline Match, 131-2-0; 4 M Rowe, Poole, 130-3-0.