Big match win confirmed on long drive home

Such are the effects of social distancing measures in match fishing that sometimes winning anglers don’t know they’ve won until an hour after leaving to go home. That’s what happened to Andy Power in a recent Fish O’Mania qualifier at Tunnel Barn Farm.

Rules state that anglers must pack up and leave immediately after weighing in, and after putting 238-6-0 on to the scales the Preston Innovations man did just that, thinking that he hadn’t won. A text 90 minutes into his journey back to Somerset told him he actually had!

“I had a bit of luck, as Luke Bamford went over the weight limit in one of his keepnets,” reveals Andy.

“He’d have won the match easily otherwise!”

Andy’s plan for his peg 5 on Extension Pool draw was based around casting shallow and then fishing tight across to the reeds on the island.

Three hours in on the shallow line at 6m using banded caster he’d caught really well, an estimated 150lb of F1s. When this slowed up, he went out to the reeds with banded 4mm pellet to take around 80lb of carp and F1s in the final two hours.

Andy Power (pictured) had no idea he had won the match until 90-minutes into his drive home.