| Rob and Tom's Madine blog |
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 Well, 10 months have flown past and Tom and my reign as WCC champions for 2009 is fast coming to an end. We are now looking forward to the 2010 event with eager anticipation and enthusiasm to defend our title and hopefully do well as individual pairs and to be part of the Carpworld team that goes on to win the team event for a 4th consecutive year. As always the past year has been incredibly busy for both of us with the aftermath of our victory at Madine seeing us involved in plenty of publicity engagements including appearances on national tv and guests of Carplove Tv, Hungary, attending the Budapest carp show in November with Ross Honey and Andy Chambers in an unforgettable weekend. In between then and now we have competed in the BCAC championships in the UK winning our eliminator at Dartford Lakes and then finishing 3rd of 25 pairs in the semi-final at Barston Lake in Birmingham to qualify us for the BCAC Final to be held in Southampton against 13 other pairs in the middle of September. The date of this event means that either Tom or myself will be parting company a day earlier from Madine to enable one of us to be at the start of the BCAC final in the UK. The remaining one of us will finish the Madine match and join the other 24hrs later. A nice dilemma to find ourselves in, but one that holds logistical problems we wont have encountered in previous WCC events.  Tom has made a couple of trips to Rainbow lake in France this year as well as Luke Moffats Graviers Lake catching some impressive carp to just under 70lb, apart from an uneventful trip to Rainbow for myself in October last year my fishing has been confined to the UK and pretty limited escepting the BCAC matches and practising with Tom.Other matters this past year have seen Tom and I with 25 friends visiting the sedate surroundings of Ibiza, Spain for Toms stag weekend (5 days). As we both like to party hard we almost overdid it (correction, we definitely overdid it) and are both still recovering (the trip was a month ago). Obviously a stag do precedes a wedding and Tom will be tying the knot and having the chains applied on July 25th. He now belongs to that not so exclusive club as the rest of us where he has to explain himself. So, as Ross keeps reminding us, preparation, preparation, preparation…….. we are now fully in the throes of organising ourselves for the 2010 competition at Lac de Madine and the checklists have come out, new ones written and the “France kit” dusted down. Obviously some prep work that Tom and I have done previously will hold us in stead this year such as mapping of the lake . We have kept the mapping of the swims and pegs from last year along with catch reports of the last 2 years and will have this information with us when we look at the peg map this year for the all important pick or place draw.  We have boat insurance in place and have booked our tunnel crossing (this time taking two vehicles for the one of us to return earlier). At some point soon we will inflate the boat and make sure everything is in working order . We are now arranging for our leads to be made , we got through appx 50 x 12 oz leads last year which we were dropping on the takes (don’t forget bream and other nuisance fish). Pretty soon I will be talking to Kev Knight at Mainline baits and agreeing our bait requirements for boilies, for particles we still haven’t decided as last year we really didn’t get through much at all, instead using about 40kilo of boilies.  Over the next month (not with standing family holiday to spain, Toms wedding, work and practise for BCAC final) we will both be getting all the tackle sorted and checking everything is ok. Tom and I both have a totally separate set of kit for France including Rods and reels as well as the normal boat paraphernalia. This will involve complete respooling of all the reels (we take 4 rods/reels each, 2 sets of spares) with Ultima 16lb powercarp mono line. We will take additional spare spools of braid, both sinking and floating in case we want to use braid as opposed to mono. Snags and thick weedbeds may dictate using the latter. We will also take enough spare mono and braid in case of respooling during the match (At lac de Orient in 2007 we had our rods taken out by a spotter plane cutting at the rod-tip 300-350 yards of line on 2 rods – which we manged to retrieve.) Nearer to the time we will be checking the long range weather forecast for the champagne region and we will continue to do this right up to the start of the match. The weather conditions can have an effect on your decision to keep a peg or redraw. I will also be keeping in contact with Andy Chambers as much as I can for general information about the event as well as logging onto the WCC website more frequently to keep abreast of anything that may be relevant to our chances. Tom has some contacts that will be around Madine at this time of the year so we will be trying to ascertain catch reports prior to the match. As always Tom and I will arrive at Madine on the Friday before the match to give us 2-3 days in order to look around the lake and any new pegs, prepare any particles, tie rigs, buy our food locally and all the other things that require doing immediately before the match itself. Soooo for now I shall leave you all to make your own preparations for your participation in this year’s event. Tom and I will make regular updates to the site and keep you informed of our own progress in the build up to September, and who knows, we may just mention something that you won’t have thought of. Regards Rob Tough/Tom Duncan-Dunlop |
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