The pair of 30’s that helped the pair progress to the final
Kev Hewitt and Mark Bartlett fished a tough semi-final at Linear Brasenose 1 this weekend, but it all came good in the end. Here Kev tells the full story, well done mate!:
‘It was time to defend our title and this years British Carp angling Championships semi final couldn’t have come any quicker. Myself and angling partner Mark Bartlett were going to be battling it out yet again on Brasenose 1 where the top 4 anglers at the end of the match would progress to the finals on Wraysbury in September with a chance of winning £20k and more importantly the big glass trophy.
Last year’s BCAC winners Kev & Bart aim to defend their title
Now B1 is one of my favourite match venues. I feel like it is as fair a venue as you can get and would be near impossible to predict the winning peg. Prior to this, I had been on great form on the venue having fished a semi final on there for the past 4 years where I/we had won the last 3 semi finals and both qualified in the top 4 from a singles event semi on there 4 years ago.
This year was going to be as tough as ever with a good stamp of anglers competing. We wanted to be on the end of the wind but same as last year we ended up at the opposite end of the lake off the back of the wind. We knew it was going to be difficult but we were also confident that at some point the fish would turn up and we would need to make the most of it.
Kev keeps the bait going in
During the first 18 hours of the match we never had a sniff despite our best efforts. We kept working at it and eventually a few fish turned up and we started to piece together a few fish and crept up the leader board. By the final morning we were up into the 4th and final qualifying spot with 11 fish. There were a number of pairs within a few fish of us so the final morning was going to be tight. Now more than ever we needed a good run of fish and when we received a double take, Bart landed the first and very excitedly told me it looked 35Lb+.
Shortly after I landed the next fish and as they sat next to each other in neighbouring nets, we soon realised the second fish was even bigger. The first tipping the scales at 35.12 and the second 37.4. That really was a nerve settler and it pushed us up into third place and over the remaining few hours we pieced together a good run of fish to end up with 25 fish total for a weight of 510Lb and more importantly securing our place in the 2017 BCAC final were we will not give up our trophy without a fight!
A couple of other Brasenose mirrors that helped add to the tally
All off our fish were caught on a mixture of tactics ranging from Ronnie rigs over bait, single zigs at varying depths and ranges, spodding over zigs, controller float and over depth zigs. We just had to keep changing constantly to keep the bites coming’.