Last gasp fish secures £50,000 match win - How this year's Golden Reel was won
TONY Coates is the new Golden Reel Angling Champion, earning himself a £50,000 pay day.
Tony Coates with the Golden Reel trophy
Lining up as one of the 40 semi-finalists in a one-off eliminator at Larford on the Wednesday before the final, Beverley-based Tony won it with 200lb-plus from peg 28 on the grass bank of the Match Lake – and then went and drew it again for the final!
This time, though, 68-1-0 was enough to win by just 9lb from Welsh rod John Hannam, who was on the end peg of the burr bank. Tony takes up the story...
At the peg
“I felt the end pegs would dominate, so I was pleased to have one. I set up a mugging rig plus 6m and 16m pole lines, margin rigs, and a bomb and Method feeder rod to chuck to the point of the island. I planned to start on the pole short and work my way out.
“On pellet short at 6m I had nothing for 30 minutes. I moved out to 16m, but the wind made it hard to fish here, pinging pellets over the top. I did catch a couple of carp, but it was a real sit-and-wait job.
“The bomb to the island caught me one more carp. Although I managed two on the mugging rig I felt this wasn’t the right method, so it was back on the bomb with 8mm pellet, when I caught two more carp.”
Tony in action
A burst on the Method
“At around 2.30pm I had a look in the margins but the fish were very spooky, coming into the edge but then bow-waving off once you put the pole over their heads.
“It was time to pick up the Method and cast a metre away from where I was fishing the bomb, using a wafter on the hook. Three carp in three casts took me into the lead! But with an hour to go John Hannam began to catch quickly – if his carp were big, I felt he could overtake me in no time.”
Last-gasp carp!
“With half-an-hour to go I snapped my feeder off, so I cast the bomb back out, turned around to pick up another feeder and the rod almost got pulled in!
“With that fish in the net, I set the Method up, chucked it out and caught a carp straight away. Then it went dead.
“I’d still fed the pole lines but had left them alone for a long time. Dropping in at 6m with pellet I foul-hooked a 5lb carp but landed it, then lost another next drop-in.
“The last 10 minutes or so were spent out at 16m on the deck, and with 30 seconds to go I nailed another 5lb fish. Would this be the one to win me the match?”
A last gasp fish secured £50,000
Enough for victory?
“Talk was that I’d won, although John had been catching really well with big fish too. My two late carp seemed to have kept him at arm’s length, however, so I was confident – although 68lb is a very low weight for Larford. I was hoping no-one had sneaked a few big fish out without anyone seeing.
“You couldn’t follow the scales around, so I sat tight and waited anxiously for John’s weight to be broadcast on the tannoy.
“There was relief when his total was confirmed at 59-1-0, more or less one carp behind me. I honestly believe if we’d fished for another 15 minutes he might have beaten me, and without a doubt I owe a lot to those two fish I caught at the death!”
Tony with his catch
700lb-plus haul smashes match record!
THE six-hour match record at a top northern fishery has just been obliterated with an incredible 714lb 15oz of carp.
Mosella Quaker-backed bagger James Roper was fishing peg 38 on Angel of the North Fishery’s Bowes Lake when he netted fish to 14lb on a mixture of margin and shallow tactics to beat the 642lb best.
“On the day my peg looked perfect as it was red hot and the wind was blowing in,” he told us.
“In the first hour alone I had 100lb down the edge on 6mm expanders over micros, then for the rest of the match I caught steadily on 8mm hard pellets fished shallow at 10m range.
“The peg was solid, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t exhausted – I even had cramp in my forearms three times!”
Using a strong pole and a size 20 elastic, James landed a carp every two minutes and ended the contest with 17 keepnets in the water – half of which he stored in the next peg due to a lack of room!
Just part of James Roper’s phenomenal haul of carp
Commercials playing their part in the angling boom - Reader letter
A long time ago, angling celeb and TV personality Matt Hayes wrote an article about ‘real’ fishing and compared it with commercial fisheries.
Matt said that he felt that commercials were responsible for sanitising fishing, and that the real excitement of a catch came from anticipation.
At the time, many of us would have shared Matt’s sentiments. However, since then commercials have been quietly maturing. They contain some cracking roach and monster perch, piling on weight from the pleasure anglers’ baits to offer a challenge worthy of the best of us.
Knowing Matt’s commitment to all things fishing, I’m sure he will be absolutely buzzing at seeing the explosion in fishing over the last few months, and be grateful to the part commercials have played in this upturn.
Commercial venues are about much more than just carp
Ron Brooke, via email
Do you agree with Ron? Let us know by emailing your letters to atletters@bauermedia.co.uk
Broken pole not enough to stop £1000 match win
Bait-Tech’s Gareth Lennox ended his weekend £1,000 better off after winning the Fish O’Maniac Final at Devon’s Stafford Moor complex.
He saw off the 17 other finalists on Tanner’s Lake with 173-2-0 of carp, the win coming despite Gareth snapping his pole.
After a qualifying match the day before, the 18 finalists lined up and Gareth got peg 20 from the bag.
Starting on pellet short he caught only a few skimmers. That meant a change to fishing at 16m down the margins to pick off a few carp – then he broke his pole!
With no spare section, he picked up the bomb rod and cast down the edge with worm on the hook over loosefed pellets.
It worked like a dream as the peg got stronger the longer the match went on to see him home. The win follows Gareth qualifying for the Golden Reel Final – quite a productive spell!
A broken pole didn’t stop Gareth from securing the win at Stafford Moor
Second on peg 16 was England ace Des Shipp, who went for a pellet attack at 6m and in the margins to land carp for 157-1-0.
Result:
1 G Lennox, Bait-Tech, 173-2-0; 2 D Shipp, Preston Innovations, 157-1-0; 3 L Werrett, Middy/Bait-Tech, 155-12-0; 4 A Lee, Banstead, 153-2-0; 5 A Allen, Stafford Moor, 133-13-0; 6 M Heard, Stafford Moor, 126-11-0.
The winning catch
400lb bag smashes Larford Lakes record
Mikey Williams crushed the opposition to win the recent Golden Reel match at Larford Lakes with a venue record weight of 401-8-0, booking himself a return visit to Larford in September for the final and a crack at winning £50,000.
His end peg 30 on the grass bank of the Match Lake had no angler to his right until the opposite bank, and pegs to his left were not drawn. That meant more fish to draw into his own peg.
“They seemed too far up in the water to catch them on pellet, so I put two dead red maggots on the hook to get a slower fall of the bait,” Mikey says.
“After 55 minutes I had 127lb on my clicker. After 90 minutes, though, the carp drifted off to the space on my left.
I needed to get them back in my peg.“I started lashing in casters at 13m, fishing two maggots shallow on the same rig I’d used to mug early on, and I caught another 150lb in the next two hours, but the lad opposite me was bagging as well, so I wasn’t having it all my own way.”
By fishing corn over groundbait to both margins, in the final 15 minutes alone he had 44lb of carp from the left-hand side, which proved to be the better of his edges. “It was solid with fish!” he says.
Larford is on fire at the moment
Giant commercial perch banked just before lockdown
KRISTIAN Thomas caught this enormous perch from White Springs Fishery in Wales, just before the UK went into lockdown to battle the Coronavirus pandemic.
The fantastic fish spun the scales to an impressive 5lb 8oz, one of the biggest perch Kristian, his friends and the fishery had ever seen.
He told Angling Times:
“I was at White Springs trying to catch big perch from the margins on maggots, worms and prawns.
“By lunchtime I’d had two perch to just over 2lb, but then my float slowly pulled away again so I lifted into the fish. My first reaction was that it was a small carp but then I saw it top around 20 yards out and I was shocked to see it was a massive perch. It then stayed deep and I couldn’t lift it because I was fishing with light gear.
“My mate Jordan was standing behind me with his small landing net and when he saw it he dropped his net to go and fetch a bigger one! I already had the perch on the surface so I screamed at him to hurry up. He was soon back, though, and managed to scoop it in first time.
“The weight instantly fell off my shoulders, but I was in shock at the size of the fish. At this point, five other anglers had come over to look at the perch as I was weighing it. They all said that they’d never seen a perch that big!”
Best peg in the country!
Many pegs are given the billing of the ‘best in the country’ throughout a fishing year and at present, the king of them all has to be 99 on the Snake Lake at Essex complex Puddledock Farm, scene of a string of 200lb carp weight since before Christmas and home to Tony Raymond’s 213-10-0 winner in the latest open match.
To look at it though, the swim offers nothing different to the 99 others on this sprawling lake, but the carp seem to like it for some reason and have balled up in numbers here for almost two months and are refusing to move!
Tony caught dobbing maggots along the gaps in the far bank sedges at 14m and then feeding minimally down the central track to net fish to 8lb and leave Ian Nash a distant second with 117-4-0 from next-door peg 98. With £500 golden pegs in operation at the fishery too, regulars will be hoping that 99 is put down as one of them in future opens!
“We see it every year when the carp shoal up in a few pegs and stay there all-winter,” said Puddledock boss Steve Mould.
“Pegs 100, 99 and 98 are the current epicentres and they all want to draw there but it has its own pressure when you do get it because everyone is expecting you to win and win with 200lb too!”