It was another case of ‘close but no cigar’ for an England team on World Champs duty as the Ladies side came up just short in their quest last week, ending the event in fourth spot following a tough two matches on the French venue.
Scoring 58 points, England finished the championships 16 points off a bronze, which went to Poland, with Hungary taking silver on 32 points and host nation France the gold with 31 points. Individually, Dutch sensation Anja Groot won her fourth World Champs title on weight after tying with Hungarian Diana Walter-Barna on three points.
The squad of Julie Abbott, Sam Sim, Charlotte Gore, Leanne Knott, Kayleigh Dowd and Helen Dagnall – overseen by manager Dave Brooks and his right-hand man Jason Kirk – endured a difficult first day, scoring 32 points to sit well off the pace. However, a much-improved second match scored them 26 points to rocket back up the leaderboard, although there was perhaps a little too much left to do to get a medal.
Top performer for England was Julie with seventeenth spot overall, as she scored a section sixth and second, Kayleigh winning her section on day one but then coming in ninth on Sunday for 10 points and twentieth spot. Leanne scored 11 points across the weekend, Sam 14 and Helen 15, with Charlotte not fishing on either day.
“On reflection, we were a long way off the bronze medal,” Dave said. “Even though we were much, much better on day two, pegging back that many points when there’s only 12 anglers in each section is a lot to ask.”
“We got it wrong on day one in terms of the feeding,” he continued. “The venue was very hard, and the girls were fishing for between 800g and a kilo, which back in the UK would see you easing back on the feed and scratching. On this venue, the opposite applied, and you actually needed to feed a lot more. We ended up feeding more bait in terms of weight than the total weight of fish we caught on Sunday, which is just totally the opposite to how we all fish back home!”
“After day one, we realised this and fished a lot more positively on Sunday, feeding aggressively and sticking to just one line at 11.5m, putting in 500ml of joker alone in the baiting-up period and then topping up regularly with small balls, even if we weren’t catching – if you fed nothing, you had no chance,” Dave revealed. “It was a case of damage limitation, but our performance on day two was enough to leave me satisfied that we hadn’t got it totally wrong.”
Small fish were the target, with only an odd rogue bream or mullet acting as bonus fish, which one team deliberately targeted as they were so random. Without this big fish line and a get out of jail card, it was down to winkling out little fish.
“It was such a peggy venue though,” Dave said. “Kayleigh won her section on day one and then drew the peg next door on day two and came ninth! It was totally different, being deeper and plumbing up all over the place, so you could never quite say whether you’d drawn well or not. In fairness, France, Hungary and Poland were the best teams on the bank and deserved their medals.”
“I spoke to the Men’s Manager Mark Downes on the Saturday night, and he told me that on the Continent, that way of feeding is common. The annoying thing is that it happened to us in Poland a few years ago, so we should have been aware of it,” he explained. “One of the big problems is that we don’t fish bloodworm in the UK. Anglers and clubs are scared of it, so we’re fishing once a year with it and are already at a disadvantage compared to the other teams.”
