The 2nd Veterans World Angling Championship took place 11th – 12th July at Furzton Lake, Milton Keynes. This year for the first time the Angling Trust hosted the event, with seven teams of four anglers per team taking part.
After three days of practising the England team were mainly catching roach with bloodworm and joker attack. The tactic was to introduce 12 good balls of specially mixed groundbait and Leam as an initial feed and to top up where necessary. The competition on the first day seemed to be anyone’s match but Chrit Moris of Belgium took the lead in the individual classification on B3 with 6.275kg. At the end of the first day it was a good result with England joining France to tie on 11 points putting them into joint first place.
Although every team had fished a waggler line on the second day, it hadn’t been productive so England concentrated on the pole with the most important tactic for England being to use more chopped worm in the feed. The team also made a decision to re-bait early after the initial feed and to be more positive using groundbait with casters, maggot and joker.
The fishing on day two was exceptional with all eyes on defending World Champion Mark Addy, but Michel Perdriau of France fought to take the gold medal away from him and put in an outstanding winning performance with total of 2 points and a weight of 10.740kg in total over the two days . Michel ended the first day on peg A4 with a weight of 4.925kg, but on the second day of the Championship he proved that he deserved the gold medal on peg A7 with 5.815 kg. Runner up in the individual classification who worked hard on the day was Angelo Sorti of Italy with 3 points and a podium weight of 10.990kg. The bronze medal was awarded to Adriaan Van Der Heever of South Africa with 3 points and 10.250kg, and giving South Africa their first medal in this type of Championship.
Congratulations must go to France who pushed England all the way to take the gold medal title of 2009 2nd Veterans World Championship team classification and winning with 22 points and a total weight of 39.300kg. France proved to be ideally equipped to tackle such a venue, and fought consistent throughout the event to win gold. The team was: Patrick Solbes (Captain), Gilles Lannoy, Jean-Claude Deoussargues, Alain Dancot, and Michel Perdriau, Serge Bourson (Reserve), and delegate Daniel Lapierre. Falling into second place by just 3 points, with a total weight of 39.300kg, were England who were close to winning the title on their home soil. Hungary finished with 26 points and 36.875kg to take the Bronze.
Competition organiser, Dick Clegg, stated “Joe Roberts and his team were extremely professional in their approach to the match and were tactically almost perfect. After 4 team trials on the venue and then 3 more practice sessions our lads formulated a team plan that worked well on the first day. Unfortunately we were up against an exceptionally strong French team who were brought up on bloodworm and joker fishing. These guys have been fishing for roach for the past 50 years and England were always going to find them difficult to beat, even on home soil. Winning the second days match and having the individual winner secured the result for a brilliant French team.
Furzton Lake is the fairest venue that I have fished in 25 years of being involved in World Championships, and the Angling Trusts team of volunteers and stewards did a brilliant and professional job in organising the event.”
