World Carp Classic - Offical Global Website
Lake Bolsena 3rd - 9th September 2012
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The most amazing World Carp Classic ever is now underway. The draw was completed last night and with the two previous winning pegs taken out of the draw it’s the most positive step that the organisers could have taken in the majority of anglers’ minds. Those winning pegs, positioned next to each other, obviously shared a great deal of water which was a definite holding area for carp. In light of that, it was felt that to keep the competition as open and competitive as possible; if these pegs were removed it would open up the event for all competitors. Basically, if either or both of those two pegs were left in, and were ultimately to win the event again, competitors had only a 2 in 130 chance of drawing one of the winning pegs. But as it is now, without them, it is estimated that there may be as many as 25 or 30 potential winning pegs. In my humble opinion, Ross Honey has taken a massive step towards proving that the World Carp Classic is not only the biggest and best Carp angling event in the history of the sport, but also that it’s the fairest and most forward thinking. Never before has an event ditched previous winning pegs, and I applaud Ross for having the ‘sphericals’ to do so. A ‘for instance’ on how the draw went; I had been chatting a fair bit with Tony Stray and Garry Wright for the two days leading up to the draw as they live locally to me. I sat with the guys throughout the draw and watched as, one by one, their favoured pegs were painfully crossed off their list - having been drawn by other pairs. Tony and Gary were number 101 to be called onto the stage which had been decided by an order draw which takes place during the registration process. Last year the winning peg was drawn by the pair who were number 51 to go up and so, ultimately, the draw was affectively over at that point as far as the winning peg was concerned. However, with the dynamics now changed dramatically by the omission of the two aforementioned pegs, it transpired that even though there were only 30 pegs left for Garry and Tony to draw from, they still had a pretty good chance of pulling out a fancied peg from their list... and they did just that! They were elated to pluck out peg 13 on the Carplove section as it has so much going for it: it's on the end of the section at the entrance to a very large bay with no anglers to the right of them in the bay, and to the left and middle there is a wide expanse of open water in front of the swim. In all, the swim has good potential to become a major holding area during the pressure situation of the competition. When I asked how the two would fish, they told me with a twinkle in their eye that the only plan they wanted to share was that it would be Wright on the right, and Stray to the left. Naturally!
Monday 6th September Bleary eyed, I was up and about at first light and already bivvy city had transformed into a veritable ghost town. Things move very quickly around here, and by the time I’d had breakfast there were only two vehicles remaining in bivvy city and my drive along the dam wall to HQ revealed a plethora of bivvies already encamped along the north bank. In fact, all around the lake anglers could be seen busily moving mountains of tackle, transporting it to their swims. I know for a fact that many of the competitors will be feeling the strain this morning and will be suffering from their late night activities (as I am). It’s perhaps easy to imagine that you might grab an early night but, I assure you, for anglers experiencing the excitement level akin to a kid on Christmas Eve, it’s not so easily achieved! I was pleased to interview my French buddy, Valentin Du Ruffray and his business partner Charles, who are co-owners of Banana Rods, a European based custom rod building service, and hopefully the video will be of some interest? (Please visit the video clip via the link at the foot of the page.) I headed over to HQ to discover that the first fish of the competition had been landed - it came out at around 16.30 - winning the captor a prize of £500 in sponsors’ product. The fish fell to Barry Sewell in Indyline peg 4 and whilst not a big fish by any standards, at just 5.6kg, he won’t mind in the least as it will net him a handsome reward for first fish of the competition. A few hours later, news of two more fish came in within a few minutes, one falling to Tony Stray (the pair I have chosen to follow) at 18.8kg, just over 41lb, and is a cracking start for the Hampshire lads. The other fish was again a small one at just over 7kg, but I would imagine that its captor won’t be too bothered about that, as he’s now off the mark and on the catch list. Thought for the day: Drinking copious volumes of beer is an excellent remedy for hyperactivity in brain cells. In fact, it’s so good that mine took the day off altogether! More tomorrow (erm, no, not beer!) Good luck to all the WCC contestants, and tight lines to the rest of my angling friends. Steve |
Steve Howard’s World Carp Classic blog - Sunday 5th September
With this revelation in mind, the peg draw was even more intense and exciting than ever and with so many possibilities now on offer, the whole of Paris could have been lit up for a month by the level of electricity generated.
A great bloke and good friend Ardy Veltkamp had drawn number 1, and was first to go up on stage. I was nervous for him as although he was able to draw from all of the swims, it often goes wrong, but luckily for Ardy he drew a fairly good swim and has a reasonable chance of catching one or two fish. It was also nice to see great angler and friend of mine, George Csonka and his partner John Roberts pull out the exact swim that they wanted, peg 2 Indyline, which has to be one of the top 10 fancied swims and that puts them in with a very good chance of catching a few fish. Frank Warwick and Jason Cann drew the peg I had last year, which was unproductive on that occasion so let's hope that the boys have better luck than we did. Tim Paisley and Lee Jackson weren't entirely happy with their draw as it was central to the big island with a good number of pegs to either side of them, not good... Tim selected a much more descriptive word.
As the start of the competition was at 14.00, I retired to my room to snatch a bit of me-time, and I think I must have needed it more than I thought, as I never woke until around 19.30 – Just in time for dinner, hey ho!
