Carp Team England Wins Gold!

Team manager Rob Hughes picked a team consisting of Wayne Mansford with Ryan Need, Karl Pitcher with Harry Charrington and myself fishing with Mark Bartlett.

Rob had laid out the plan, it was a solid one that we all believed in and one which each and every angler stuck to and delivered with precision. The plan was solid and it got us all off the mark catching fish from fairly early on in the match. By sticking to the plan the fishing got stronger for all of our pairs and we found ourselves climbing the table sitting in silver medal position going into the final night of the 72 hour competition. We were a fair way behind gold but we fished hard through the night and were rewarded with some lovely fish whilst most other nations struggled. The weather had dropped off and it was freezing the final night which slowed the fishing down for most.

Myself and Mark went into the final night in 4th place in our section with 8 fish for 16kg with 30Kg winning our section. We had a 12kg fish during the night and a couple more fish with a few hours to go which climbed us to top spot in our section.

The other lads had fished a blinder with Harry and Karl finishing second in their section missing out on individual silver medal by 700g! Both me and mark, Wayne and Ryan managed to hold on to first place in our respective sections which gave us an untouchable team score of 1-1-2 which was enough to pip Moldova to gold by a single point with Romania getting bronze with a respectable 8 points.

Being part of a world championship winning team has been a dream of mine for over 10 years and to achieve it along side my best mate and a fantastic team of friends was an amazing feeling.

There were lots of twists and turns throughout and right up to the final whistle and I’m still not quite sure it has fully sunk in, we are the champions of the world.