PAA Predator Grandprix 2019 - Hawksbury Junction

I was nervous about this one to say the least! I had no idea if anyone I knew would be fishing and for all I knew I might be crashing an exclusive club match that didn't want any interlopers. On top of that I knew the canals were in a right state after two weeks of turbulent weather as a couple of storms had passed through. The zander should by all rights be either about spawn or on the nests and the perch had become like ghosts as they too were meant to be spawning soon. If that wasn't enough the weather was predicted to be a mixed bag through the day which for light lure fishing can make things very hard...

When I arrived into the parking area it was already buzzing with anglers all ready for a day of lure slinging, but from what I could see at first glance I might be the only non-polish competitor in attendance. That was until I spotted Ashley who I'd met a few weeks prior in the Tusses Spro warm up. I needn't have been concerned about being one of the few English lads competing as it quickly became very clear that the members from the Polish Anglers Association were a very friendly lot and welcomed us heartily, every one of them shaking hands upon arrival which would be something nice to see at other matches. It was also somewhat helpful that we knew Greg Bafia from the Tusses lure division who very helpfully translated any important info through the day. After all the greetings were done and the entrance fee was paid, the chaps in charge began paring us up ready for the off and filling us in on the rules for the match.

Having had a little wander around the venue a couple of days prior and seeing what a state the canals were in after the ever blowing gales had kept just about every molecule of sediment suspended in the water, I knew the first few hours of this match would be key. As much as I dislike the Oxford canal it seemed the best option as there was a noticeable colour difference between that and the adjacent Coventry. So with my partner in tow I lead us directly onto the Oxford and this turned out to be a great decision for me as early on I hooked and landed a good size zander which not only settled me down quickly but also put me in a great position early on.

A great start

50cm

By now a lot of the competitors who had gone down the Coventry were filtering back up and down onto the Oxford in search of comfort away from the wind and better conditions in general. This meant that most of the water myself and my partner fished would be second hand which was not ideal. Oddly though three or four spots further down the canal I targeted a snaggy narrow area only to quickly get a pluck which soon turned into a second pluck, followed by a proper hit. Luckily I had located a shoal of small zander and quickly landed two perfect match sized fish.

32cm

22cm

Much as expected things got worse as the morning wore on. Early on some fantastic fish had been caught including a rumoured 77cm zander, some decent pike and a big perch, but as soon as the first boats began chugging through, the little clarity we had soon disappeared in the clouds of silt churned up. With three zander on my score card I really wanted to try and root out some small perch and so scaled down my lures specifically to target them, focussing on potential holding spots, but the efforts was in vain as the captures all round deteriorated with the weather. In a two hour period the weather changed from sunny and very windy to raining heavily, then snowing. In a break from the weather we marched back to the most productive area where it promptly began hailing hard. Honestly this sudden influx of cold water did nothing to help the already slow fishing in my opinion.

After recovering any of the spot where I had found fish, I rolled the dice and dragged my partner off for one last foray onto the abandoned Coventry. It was a real gamble as the wind was hammering down the canal and the water was almost thick, it was that muddy, but if this decision paid off I could have scored some massive perch from one or two haunts I knew. The perch were much as they have been for a while now, conspicuous by their absence! My effort though was rewarded by a single small zed which on a match this hard proved very valuable at 22cm long.

22cm

It had been a hard match all round from what I could tell but this wasn't evident in the high spirits of all the competitors who were laughing and joking about the awful weather and generally enjoying themselves. On a hard day I was happy with the four fish I had caught, but until the sheets were in and the scores tallied up I would have to wait to see how I had done.

Total = 126cm

It wasn't until one of the officials told me to make sure I stuck around that I realised that I had actually done quite well in these terrible conditions. As the officials spoke away in Polish, Greg translated. Prizes for a previous competition were handed out and the juniors were applauded. Then after a while they got onto the top scores of the day and happily my name came out for the 2nd place position.

I was made up to finish in the top three as from what I had seen of my fellow competitors they fished really well and their cast rates are unbelievable. Not only were all the other chaps there great anglers but they made me feel very welcome and they were full of congratulations after the prizes were awarded. I will certainly not think twice before fishing another PAA event in the future should the opportunity arrive as they really were a great bunch to fish along side.

A competitive foray #3

Match day

When I walked out the door into the dark at six in the morning I was met by the sight of sparkling cars reflecting the street lights. I knew it had been cold but this seemed a bit more than a sharp frost. Sitting there as the ice melted from the car window screen I was nervous, this was a big event I was going to and it had been playing on my mind for a few days now that this was only my third ever lure fishing match and frankly I didn't want to make a fool of myself. To sooth my nerves I just kept repeating over and over again in my head my mantra of the day 'just get something on the sheet'. Soon enough though I was speeding through the frosty countryside headed to the McDonalds on the A45 near rugby where Dave Mutton, the team captain, had called us for a team meeting and breakfast.

If I had felt a little out of my depth before I left then now I felt worse. Most of my team mates were seasoned competitors and the mix of lure branded kit indicated they did this regularly or a manufacturer had faith in them. There was me in my bobbly fishing hoody and hat looking like I was going flipping paint balling not fishing. A few of them I knew from the Tusses match a few weeks prior, a couple I knew via Facebook but for most they were all new to me, happily though we all spoke the same language of fishing. Talking about our practices and sharing snippets of knowledge served to settle me and soon enough Dave stood up and began his captains talk. He went through the does and don'ts and ultimately made it clear this was first of all a team event and thus helping out each other was paramount to the general effort, which made a lot of sense.

On the road again the sun was now rising and I was bleeding lost like an idiot! Some of the team had come half way across the country and here I was travelling through my own county lost looking for a village I have driven through hundreds of times this year alone. Soon enough I was back on track and found myself queuing to drive onto a half frozen half fallow field filling with keen rubber chuckers of various nationalities

It seemed to take ages to get ready to be set free by the CRT chaps in charge and people were getting very impatient to be off after registration. After discussing plans with many of my team mates I had just about decided on where to go. Of the three sections the match stretch could be divided into I liked the look of the middle heavily featured lock section or the more distant top section. The bottom section from the start down to the welsh road bridge held no appeal at all as I knew this section was a royal pain in the arse once the locks opened and I wanted no part of that. From what I could see there were a lot of people intending to hit the locks so I made the decision to go for space over features and head up to the top in order to have more water to fish. This in mind I never took my gear out of the car and instead lingered on the periphery of the crowds looking for my pre-assigned Bulgarian partner for the day, Svetoslav Ognyanov, whom I had already contacted via Facebook. With the initial parings officially brought together they gave the milling crowed some final instructions before they cut us all loose to fish. As we had previously agreed I headed back to my car, partner in tow, to zoom up to the top of the match stretch and get fishing...

The CRT international friendly

Venue = The Grand Union Canal bridges 18-30

The first hour was hard! The colour had dropped out of the water overnight with the cold and visibility was good, but this made the fish nervous to begin with. I had several slight enquiries early on fishing tight to features but nothing was prepared to commit. To make matters worse I saw some of the other competitors catching, which made me panicky. It wasn't till we all started spreading out along the stretch that I caught my first small perch just off the shelf which served to settle me down. All I needed was another one and a few zeds and that would do.

Quickly me and my partner developed a method of working together. I continually moved at a snail's pace working the inside hard as he picked spots he liked the look of and fished them before catching me up, either choosing a spot in front or behind of me to cast across the canal. For quite a while I felt like we were in a fishless void and was wondering if I had made a mistake coming up the top.

Pluck...I was sure something snatched at my lure then bang! I was into a fish which was straight away pulling line off my lightly set clutch. I have never been so scared of a fish coming off as I was this one. My heart was beating fast; I was fumbling with the net. This had to be a good zander I thought just before a mottled head broke the surface. At the first opportunity I salmon scooped it up and was proper on the board now with this 57cm pike...

Reports were now coming in via the whatsApp group that things were very hard all over and everyone was experiencing the same with odd fish here and there. Myself and my partner pushed on until we came across one of my Team mates, Gary Coulson, and his polish partner who were dug in hard on a spot where Gary's partner had caught two zander. Although invited to jump in quite close the spot produced nothing for us and we carried on up the stretch. Literally we covered probably half a mile before I snagged a small zander in the lea of a bridge which brought me so close to a metre of fish.

With that metre score now in sight I was working harder than ever making sure I had every chance to get another fish. After heading to the top of the match stretch and coming back again I doubled my efforts to cover the area where I'd had the small zander from, but the spot now seemed barren. With lots of other competitors all around us all the features were getting hammered. A quick chat and myself and Svetoslav agreed to work our way back to the car, stopping at any spots that had produced fish. Not long after, as my partner fished a very fishy looking reed bed feature, I hooked a second small perch tight to the edge which came up in tandem with a copy of itself. At 17cm I knew I was over the metre with this valuable little gem.

A change of tack...

On the way back up the stretch we again came across Gary and his partner who were still holding firm on the spot that had produced now three zander. As I chatted to Gary he hooked a zander on a jig in the centre of the trench. It was then that it occurred to me changing tack might bring me those few zander I now wanted so much. I'd already covered all the margin I was about to fish with the dropshot on the way down, so why not change things just a bit to see if it might work. The micro jig was moving much quicker than I had worked the dropshot and as a few boats were now chugging down the canal I opted to work the lure off the marginal shelf just on the edge of the trench and this plan worked perfectly, producing my best zander of the day by way of a very pleasing 42cm fish to top off my catch.

Having a decent length on the sheet I was mindful to get back with plenty of time to hand in my score; I was sure under the difficult conditions of the match I had done pretty well and being late back would be a stupid thing to do with a good score. Soon enough we pulled back into the field with all the other cars to find out how things had gone. With my sheet handed in and my length added up by an official and double checked by myself I was happy to confirm I had attained a little more than my target of 150cm with a satisfying 154cm. I then went about locating some team mates to try and figure how we had done. It seemed I had done well as had a few others in our team, but most of all it seemed as a team we had just about all caught fish.

I had it half in mind that I might have been in the running for the biggest fish with my 57cm pike but news of a few bigger fish soon came in. One chap had caught a 70cm zander on his first cast, rolling the dice with a humongous lure and one of my team mates was rumoured to of had a 68cm zander as well. From what I could tell only Jacob Stone had scored over a metre with 155cm, so I was chuffed to be up there with him.

After a long wait the officials finally had the results ready to announce, the team was all together and we were hopeful that we had done well. Dave, our captain, was just about ready to explode with nerves. They first announced the biggest fish was, as we suspected, the Romanian competitor with a huge 70cm zander then they quickly moved onto the individual winners. When the third place winner was called out as Daniel Everitt with 154cm I could hardly believe it was me. Then they called out Jacob Stone with 155cm was second, much to his amazement, and not long after that Richard Haines with 165cm was first. We could barely believe it at all, we had done a clean sweep of first, second and third, and better was still to come. We all thought it and a few mumbled it, we had to have won if we'd done all the top places. And when the called out that the England team had won the overall competition we all went bonkers! Dave the captain was beaming as the bottle of champagne was sprayed all over him. What a result for team England on such a hard venue in competition with some really great teams. As for me, I still can barely believe that all my hard work paid off and on my third ever lure match I was lucky enough to get my hands on some silverware!

Total Length = 154cm

Finish position = 3rd
Team finish position = England 1st with 1435 point and an average legnth per angler of 57.4cm

Me and my new friend and brilliant partner, Svetoslav Ognyanov.

Dave couldn't stop smiling after such a brilliant victory.

and neither could this lot!

Well done again chaps on a great overall performance and victory. I had a brilliant day and made loads of new friends that I hope to fish with again and again in the future.