By Reece | No Comments
Last updated: Monday, July 27, 2009

Hard Hallcroft.

On Wednesday 15th July 2009 myself and 4 other students from Valley, competed in the Daiwa Angling trust school national at the Daiwa Hallcroft complex in Retford. The year before this Valley had won the event in some style at the Glebe fishery so we had our pride at stake to regain the title.

As in every other national the captain draw and as I was the captain I had that responsibility. Peg set 1 stuck to my hand and when I looked at what pegs were in in it I didn’t truthfully fancy it. I was on the moat outer peg 24, opposite a spinner. We also had peg 5 on the bridge which was the end peg I where I thought the match would be won from. The match started and 3 out of the 5 in the team threw the feeder out about 6m of the far bank or in my case u the spinner. Non of us had a bite so we switched to the pole where In the first 10 minuets on the pole I had one carp and a skimmer and lost 4 lumps.

Valleys fantastic 5.

After the match Hallcroft café provided free snacks and drinks for the competitors which made the day a much better atmosphere as every one who fished went back for the results. For once. Any way the results were read out and after working our nuts off Valley had defended our title again. The day was made sweeter for me as I won it individually for the third time in 4 years.

Fantastic fish ‘o’.

As well as the senior fish o mania final there are also the juniors there who at times seem like they are there to make the numbers up as they never get any television coverage.

Any way Worksop junior Joel Potts had qualified so I went down to keep him cool and calm and make him fish to the best of his ability. He fished a good match and stuck tightly to a plan we came up with which was if you had an island fish the method and fish pole at 11.5m at 14.5m with meat and worm and caster. The first hour had gone and he was still on zero and three big fish lost.

He made a tactical switch to pole and managed to catch some decent skimmers and tench but he didn’t have enough time make up the three kilo he’d lost in the first hour. I knew the two Tamside lads had caught all day but only small silvers. Joel ended up with a respectable 5kilo 900g finishing third with Jack Swindles winning it with 8kilo 750g.

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