Sensas Challenge 2009!!!

This month has seen me fish the Sensas Challenge UK final with the Barnsley team at Barston Lakes and Packington Somers fishery in Birmingham. It’s a fantastic two day event fished to full CIPS international rules with 24 teams of 5 competing, and the French international side sends their Sensas Team 28 over to fish as well, it’s a privilege to fish the event! I have fished the international series there this winter, and spoke about one of the practice matches last month, so here is how the big event went…..

The first day is always brilliant, I get really star struck at the draw, everyone is there, and it’s the who’s who of match fishing, with most of the England team fishing and loads of anglers from all over the country. Barston had been fishing really hard, with 3lb being a mega weight, while Packington had seen big weights of skimmers caught in the week preceding the event, so I was praying to be drawn on there! As sods law would have it, Alan Scothorne came towards us with the draw and a rather disgruntled look on his face…….there were two anglers on Barston, me and Alan! Guttered!

I was on 120 peg, and was told it was OK. Because things are fished to international rules its all 13m pole limits and waggler, with feeder fishing prohibited! The fishing tends to keep itself fairly simple for these reasons, and I planned on fishing just one pole line and then the waggler. My pole line was at 13m, and fed with a mix of Sensas Lake 3000 and brown leam, and my waggler line was for skimmers and f1’s, fed with fishmeal and brown crumb. I set up various pole rigs, mainly the new Tomas Walter bloodworm patterns from 0.3g to 0.8g, as well as a couple of heavy rigs for nailing it on the deck for skimmers as it was very windy!. My waggler rig was a 12g Tomas Walter series with an insert for sensitivity, with just a bulk near the deck and a long hook length on the bottom to hold the rig still in the wind.

At the all in I fed 8 balls on the pole line with very little feed in, just the odd caster, and cupped a ball over the top with some joker for accuracy and so I knew exactly where the bait was. I then fired out 25 small one handed walnuts of fishmeal on the waggler line at 35 turns, with loads of casters and dead pinkies, as well as a tiny bit of joker in, and planned on saving that as a last resort for a spawney skimmer later in the match!

I won’t talk loads about the match on the first day, because it was absolutely dire! I caught 8 dumpy roach on the pole line, all on my light rig with a single bloodworm just off the deck. I tried the waggler as it seemed the only way to catch a bonus fish for good points, but it wouldn’t go under! Come the end of the match, I weighed in 510 grams, which put me 7th in my 12 peg section, not very good! 2 kilo won my section, which was made up of one big tench, then Sean Ashby was 2nd with 1kilo 600, some roach and an F1 on the waggler on the next peg to me.

Pants down!!!

The rest of the team had sruggled too, with Didier; the French man who came over to fish for us had come last of a poor peg in his section, with Brett Clark and Alan both coming 7th in their sections along with me, and Lee Kerry holding us on with a section 3rd. It was time for a nice time that evening, and it certainly made up for the poor days fishing, a proper big meal, ribs and chicken, and a few beers before crashing out in the digs for the next day, which was hopefully going to be better!

One guess where I was to draw on the second day……Barston! I was hoping to be sat on a shedful of skimmers at Packington, but you cant pick and choose. I was on peg 24, where Trentmens Dale Lynch had come 7th in the section the day before with 600 grams. However, it was a new day, still blowing a gale, but I knew what to expect a bit more! I didn’t alter my approach much at all, setting up the same rigs, only feeding much less joker via the cup at the start, and decided to try topping up more throughout the day after watching Sean Ashby the day before. I fed the waggler line the same as the previous day, but there hadn’t been much caught on it the previous day so I didn’t plan on spending too much time on it as every roach on the pole would count towards the good section points we needed to come good as a team.

On the all in, I took my time and tried to keep things accurate, feeding 8 balls by hand, and cupping in three over the top, but with only 100ml of joker in, and then fed the waggler line the same as the day before, in hope of a bonus fish!!!

I was surprised as to how quick I caught, and after 15 minutes, I had three dumpy roach. There was the odd fish being caught around too. I was catching best by lowering my rig in dead slow right at the top of my peg, and would get a bite just as it ran over my bait, but it was hard work in the wind. After the first hour, I had 6 roach which was good in my section, but I then hooked a better fish that tore off like an F1 on my light 0.06 bottom with a single bloodworm! After a sort scrap, a 10 oz F1 was in the net……bonus!!!

The remainder of the match went really well, and I ended up with 18 roach and the f1. I learned quite a lot, and got into a bit of a pattern, topping up with a nougat of joker, then fishing the wag for 15 minutes to rest the peg and give myself the chance of a skimmer. Even though I never had a bite on this, every time I came back on the pole line, I would scrape another 2 or three roach, and they are dumpy 3 oz fish too!

At then end of the match I felt had done alright, but heard of a bloke with 2 F1s further up the section, other than that, everyone had really struggled. Dale Lynch on my right weighed in 1 kilo 100, which was leading the section, but I managed to push them round to 1kilo 650. The guy with the F1s went 1kilo 400. I was proper chuffed to win the section, and felt I learned quite a bit about the fishing when it’s hard at Barston. I was pleased to get some good points for the tem too. Brett Clark also won his section, but the other lads had struggled, with Lee Kerry drawing a peg that was last in the section the day before!

Anyways, the team ended up 8th out of 24, which I thought was a reasonable result, but the mighty Dorking lead the way, with a very deserving 26 points, blooming awesome result! There wasn’t anyone to touch them really! Still, it was a brilliant weekend away, despite the hard fishing, there’s always next year…and I’m sure Barston will be back to its usual fantastic form before long…