Katerina

This is one of the many carp my daughter

caught on pole in the margins on Bay Malton Angling Club waters.

She went on to win all of her trophies there. During the same year she also finished second in the junior championships against all the lads.

As always it was down to the last match of the series, in order to decide the winner it was so close. but it was not entirely her fault she probably would have won it, had it not been for me helping her to make a wrong decision. We knew from previous visits the peg numbers where the bigger fish, such as carp could be caught in any numbers, and we also knew the poorer areas, where you had to concentrate and fish very hard in order to do well.

Unfortunately my heart sank when she drew one of these poor pegs, I knew that she would probably catch smaller fish in the open water, I also knew the fish might come up in the water to feed. So she tackled up accordingly to our match plan, this was to set up two rigs one for fishing up in the water, and one for fishing on the bottom. Then to feed three cups of chopped worms some sweetcorn and casters, it was about four and a half foot deep and the plan was to put quite a lot of feed on the bottom.

In the hope that they would stay, where they are far easier to catch, and if the fish came up to feed we would be rigged up ready for them.The plan was to fish on the bottom for at least an hour, and wait for any signs of them coming up in the water to accept the loose offerings. But what happened was the fish came up far sooner than I anticipated, "she knew this" and about thirty minutes in to the match, she said she wanted to fish up in the water, I told her to carry on with the way she was fishing, because she had already caught about six fish, and was still getting bites.

I also had it in the back of my mind that she had never fished up in the water before, and hadn't practiced how to do it, never the less she picked up her other rig and almost immediately she took fish after fish.feeding casters every thirty seconds or so to hold a pole and do this believe me takes some practice.But she certainly adapted to this method almost right away.

I had to apologise to her when the match was over, because I could see how devastated she was when she had learnt, that she had come second in the match, and also as a result ending up in the championship as runner up.

Never mind Katerina you were better than the rest. xxx