fishomania

[A Worm OOE]

As others have sugested Match fishing is about making the best of your situation, it can be an overstocked lake where all the fish have their own view on how they should decorate the inside of a keepnet or on a venue where the fish have never seen a hook, it dosent matter. The sense of achievement however is the same when you get a result as that of catching a PB.

Personally I have won a National championship and for a while I had the largest ever catch in a National. That was a day to remember but in terms of satisfaction not far above the day when I won a 10man section in a SE Super League at West Drayton. I had Will Raison one side Dickie Carr the other one of the Vincent Twins in the section and Pete Vasey and Paul Uddel .... That day I had about 2.5lbs. The challenge was in the situation I found myself in not in how much I caught.

 

That said I have now given up match fishing and a large part of the reason is the lack of variety. So many of the matches in my part of the world are now focused ona small number of artificial waters of which I am bored. Personally I long for the times when I might fish a match on saturday on a London canal followed by Sunday on the Thames or Wey Nav or Moat Park or ..... In those days match anglers had to be more of an allround angler than now, however the current comercial specialists could all still adapt to a range of venues if they had to. Will raison is supreme on comercial venues but when England calls he can compete on bloodworm or whatever method he needs.

 

As for the origional contention that the match anglers would strugle on a " neutral club water" that is pure rubish, the whole point of match fishing is to be able to adapt to the situation that you are put in. The best match guys do that better than any other disciplin.

The only suprise would be by how much the "comercial Matchmen" would win.

Edited July 25, 2007 by A Worm OOE

[Newt]

Awk - I find myself agreeing with Steve Burke (not unusual) and Bob Bradford (unusual).

 

I have fished the US equiv of a commercial in matches where carp were the target. I was always beaten badly by the regulars at this match-style carping.

 

I have carp fished large wild waters with some of these same folks and guess what - they beat me badly there too in lakes measuring in the thousands of acres and with each angler free to choose the swim he fancied.

 

Basically, they were just way better at feeding than I am and with 20 or 25 of us in a reasonably small area, the best carpers drew fish to their swim with none of us really knowing the venue in advance.

 

Other than the groups of us that got together for a fish-in and used basically the UK tactics, these lakes normally saw less bait going in on a Windermere size lake than Steve does at Wingham, as lightly fished as it is. Standard US style is a hookbait and nothing more so that any baiting is accidental when an angler loses his hookbait.

 

I have watched numerous Largemouth Bass tourneys where the top Bass anglers in the US (usually 50 or so) would fish a 3-4 day match (daylight only, boats, lures) on a largish lake. The top anglers usually won even if several of the competators had the particular lake as their local where the others had only just seen it. They used maps to locate likely swims and simply outfished the others.

 

I have not competed in Bass tourneys but I have no doubt that the pros could all outfish me without breaking a sweat.

 

Regardless of venue, style, tactics, whatever, a great angler will normally out fish a good angler who will outfish a fair angler, and so on. It is always possible on a given day for a club angler to get lucky and beat any top angler but over a year, I have no doubt who will catch the most or the larger fish.

[Bob Bradford]

[Newt]

I was having a play with google earth this evening and took a screen shot of my locals. Maybe a match on here would be a good test?