New Scotland captain thrilled by victory in 48-hour competition
Catherine Robertson hailed her trophy triumph with Niki Wildman as ‘up there’ with the greatest moments in the short history of Scotland's ladies carp team.
The pair beat 64 top male anglers to take the silverware in the 48-hour Wyreside Lakes Fishery and Campsite Winter Open, with a bag of 96lb 6oz, and the clinching fish of 17lb arrived in the final 20 minutes.
Robertson, Scotland's new team captain, and Niki, a longstanding member of the squad and an angler who leisure fishes at Drumtassie near Blackridge, led the competition early on but slipped to fourth. They lost two fish at a critical time, but recovered, and that late catch brought their total to six, the biggest bag of all the 33 pairs in the event near Lancaster.
Catherine admitted they were lucky in the draw, pulling a corner peg out of the hat, but the heavens opened as they were setting up their camp and rods and she said: "Conditions then were simply grim, we are soaked to the bone, but we powered through, got changed and worked hard together over the 48 hours."
The pair have never fished together before and conditions were tough, with cold nights when carp did not feed, and patches during the day when there were no bites.
Saturday afternoon was particularly bad and Catherine, a Rangers fan, was about to tune into the radio to listen to the game against Motherwell until an angler in the neighbouring peg told her the score from Ibrox. In fact, two of the four lakes used failed to produce fish at all. Thankfully, their peg allowed margin and distance fishing, and two fish arrived within ten minutes of each other.
Catherine, who recently took over as captain of the Scotland team from Joanne Barlow, revealed that two newcomers have been added to the squad: Kimberley Lee, and Lynne England. Kimberley picked up a carp rod last year after fishing with another team member, Margo Robinson, and Lynne started fly fishing about 12 years ago in Aberdeenshire, but moved to Yorkshire and discovered carp fishing.
Catherine, a mum-of-two, revealed that the squad have ruled out competing in this year's World Championships in Latvia, which is deemed too soon after the loss of former skipper Barlow and Ruth McCormack, who also competed in the world event in France last Autumn.
A fixture against The Corps of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineeers (REME) in England is in the pipeline, and also a Tri-nations event in Northants. Scotland won silver last year at Wyreside, near Lancaster.
Catherine, who works in the Lismore Bar in Glasgow's West End, a Partick-based watering hole well-known to whisky aficionados from home and abroad, will also team up with her Tartan Team vicecaptain, Eleanor Mitchell, to tackle one of the biggest events on the carp calendar later this year. There, the 39-year-old angler, who is originally from Taynuilt in Argyll, hopes to turn heads again, and she stressed that the squad are still seeking numbers.
Onto fly fishing and Stevie Plank (Stirling) won Heat Three in the Scottish Stillwater Bank Championship at Allandale Tarn, but only just, and again it was tough going for the competitors.
Plank caught six fish, his first at 9.06am, and so did second-placed Ben Scordecchia, but his first fish was at 9.09am. Other qualifiers were Ross Black (West Calder) with five fish, Kevin Andrews (Kilmarnock) with four, Stephen Cowan (Linwood) and Sean Wilson (Whitburn) with three each and Steve Fraser (Shotts) and Toby Lomas (Linwood) with two each.