River match series plans
The resurgence of river fishing across the country continued this week with plans to launch the second major national running water competition in as many years revealed.
Following the huge success of RiverFest the new event is the brainchild of top-flight matchman and natural venue expert Michael Buchwalder. He has teamed-up with RiverFest founder Dave Harrell to discuss the idea after a post on social media site, Facebook, gained the interest of hundreds of anglers.
The duo are just two of several river experts that will now attend a meeting to discuss the launch of the four-match event that will be modelled on the popular UK Champs, which currently takes place on some of Britain’s most popular commercial stillwaters.
But with more and more anglers returning to river fishing and an increase in running water matches, Michael aims to stage the new brand-new event on venues such as the Wye, Severn, Thames, Trent and Avon.
“There’s no doubt that river fishing is making a huge comeback and there needs to be more big river matches. I’d give up fishing if I had to go to commercials all of the time!” Michael told Angling Times.
“I posted the idea on Facebook and the response was amazing. Now that Dave is on board and we have a meeting lined up with loads of other river anglers I really think that we can get this competition off the ground.”
Michael wants to build on the success of Riverfest which, run by the Angling Trust, launched last year and is the UK’s biggest river competition with a first prize of £12,000.
“Michael asked me whether I thought there might be sufficient interest to create a new four match river series along the same lines as the UK Champs and I gave him a very confident ‘yes’,” said Dave.
“There is a significant amount of interest all over the country from anglers wanting running water matches and more river matches are being created to satisfy this need. I for one would love to take part if it gets off the ground.”
