After travelling from Sodertalje Friday evening i made my way to Jamie's pad where i was greeted with Russ and Esa and we were treated to his gastronomy cooking of excellent order with a Shepherds pie washed down with copious amounts of Red Wine with a preliminary tasters of Gin and Tonic and strong beer - 'and you want to fish in the morning !?'
DAY 1
Little England in Koping . The morning was greeted with a sharp frost of about minus 2 so scraping windscreens was the morning start after Jamie's famous Bacon , Sausage and egg sandwiches with a smattering of HP Brown Sauce with orange juice that clearly made the bowel movement possible so early dumps were the order of the morning !!
Jamies Pad , home of the Swedish Chelsea supporters club - 'The Koping End'
Screen scraped and bait loaded ready for delivery to the boys
Loaded up as the maggots that stay ultra fresh in the cool box - Bait welfare with Metmask is paramount as all anglers need the bait in the best condition for the event - no smelling of rancid sweaty bait from MM and no fancy gimmicks to sell it !!
To my Right - Beautiful Autumnal day
Box on the path and just a few metres to place the box on a flat platform - it does not get better than that
To my Left - how beautiful is this venue ?
My Menu for the office was the following based on Russ and Jamies success in this years matches . Tried and tested to work , however there are a few extra ingredients !?!?!
DAY 2
Arrived to see the Norwegians at full strength as usual and great to see them knowing their ridiculous government has placed horrible rules on their use of keep nets , basically , you cannot use them - Woke thinking in our sport we do not need !!
Great to talk with the main organiser of the event and much respected angler of defining quality and ability that is Jesper Dyberg
Jamie !? .........where is he ? ......he's taking a dump !!
I drew peg 19 for Day 2 and i set up 4 x Top 5's of EXNER DELTA 10gr and 8gr with two pole floats of EXNER ISISZ 3gr and 6gr and one 6.5m whip using a 2.5gr EXNER JUNO.
Brilliant pegs where leg adjustment to the boxes are minimal and TAP is excellent for shipping rearwards
Rig time plus i added a 10gr SENSAS PIESTANY
I was really hoping that Day 2 would bring in shoals of larger Roach and Skimmers however it was a day that favoured the Bleak anglers and top weight of 12.5 kilos of Bleak was never going to be beaten . Clearly if the expected shoals of larger fish were to be there then you could compete with the Bleak lads but alas it was not to be .
I enjoyed it fishing at 11.5 metres as the wind did destroy good presentation however near the end of the match i had a run of Perch and a missed hooked Bream that left its calling card of slime up the line .
MyDay 1 was similar as i lost two decent Bream so i can imagine they were liners that i lost too , but that is fishing you cannot legislate for lost fish .
The match was a success and its hoped it will be ran next year as the venue is just one of the best in Sweden.
Enormous bag of 12kilos of Bleak
Wind swept and could have done with roach and skimmer shoals to compete
Niklas found some skimmers in the last quarter of the match
Scores on the boards for DAY 2
AGAIN MASSIVE THANKS TO JESPER AND HIS TEAM FOR A GREAT WELL ORGANISED EVENT
On the Saturday 16th October at the same venue the individual DM was fished and unfortunately the top weight was 600 grams , yes 600 grams ! Yet behind us in the main course of the canal from the town the water will be saturated in shoals of Bream , Roach , Ide , Bjorkna and Perch however we are not allowed to fish it !?
The lunacy of this is that the authorities deem it a problem to have anglers fishing for all other fish and that will upset migrating and breeding Trout ? This is incredulous as when has anyone seen a trout or even caught one in all the 20 years i have fished here ? Staggering ! Obviously this decision is not to dissimilar to England and Wales (Scotland and Ireland/s no ) where they have close season March 14th to June 15th yet canals and commercials it is okay you can fish 365 days. This has nothing to do with trout but more like ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY in bed with the ANGLING TRUST to keep a few anglers happy that their Barbel and Chub are not being upset during that period . I and sure Cormorants and Otters have disturbed them a lot more .However that is England and not here in Sweden .
Anyway onto the fishing , rant over !
Trosa steeped in history as a fishing town and its sports fishing club was started in 1934. Today a message board was placed so that hopefully the walking public can beware of our fishing and the amount of gear that we use .
Sorting out the peg draw
Johan Kindlundh to me left
Johan Axelsson with his boys in the Junior section
Well ! it was rumoured the weights good be progressively better today as historically it has been like that before that on the 2nd day the fish have moved in , have they ?
It was frustrating for all 9 anglers as the only fish feeding was micro-bleak , with a few Herrings and later in the day some small Roach were caught .........i even saw a few Jelly Fish !!!
I managed to get the best weight on the day with a hard earned 1.260 kilo made up of about 100 plus small fish . I was so disappointed for the organisers and for the guys fishing .
Mattias Larsson again superbly organises this great event and as the years have gone by it is a really top bagging fest match with huge popularity where you must get your name down early. Since 2011 the last time i fished here the pegging has changed and the match has extended out from the main narrows to the harbour area with sections either side .The 'Narrows' now fishes on the 'town' side with a section of Ladies on the opposite side further upstream .
I arrived at the main car park to engage Metmask for my bait !?
Further down the area was METEBUTIKEN doing a roaring trade with their shop and ordered bait supply .
Nice to see so many anglers also shopping for Metmask bait.
DAY 1
After getting some of my bait i then decided to go to my peg 21 . Great looking peg and an end peg which is a nice advantage to have when i am short of some essentials but to have the end peg allows me to draw fish to what fish food selection i have .
Nice view of the sections on the other side
Set up and ready to go as i have some recent form to enlarge on - i am really up for this match under the circumstances.
The match started very slowly for at least 30 minutes i did not see anyone catch ? Then gradually on the other side a few anglers were netting large Bream . Then on peg 22 next to me Andreszi from Norway took two quick Bream on the pole so i came off the feeder and placed my rig on my pre-baited area and a fish immediately was hooked . I then took two more but Andreszi took two more and we both ended up on 5 fish only however they were large fish and strangely there was no back up fish like Roach , Perch , Skimmer , Bjorkna , Ide , Vimma , just Big Bream !
Weigh in time :
Phil Ackerley Peg 21 - 8960 - sorry about the fish on the deck as it just jumped out when photo being taken , sorry !
Andreszi peg 22 - 8040
Good friend Jonas Berglund - peg 23 3040
Thomas Soderlund - peg 24 3500 - unlucky pal , you cannot be great every match 😁
Jonathan Leader peg 26 3720
Kent Persson - peg 27 10020 - section winner , great angling
Leif Persson - peg 28 6620
Niklas Strenguland - peg 29 9560
DAY 2
View of sections out towards the harbour area
My section , the 50's
This section had a low weight winner on Day 1 , i think of about 1.5 kilos so could it happen again or are the fish there ? I pre-baited with 10 small balls of just black gb /leam and a few pinkies . I then dropped one pot of chopped worm in the middle of the feed. Everyone else also pre balled their laced joker balls.
Immediately Jesper got into a bream and others did also , they are here !!! I then had a fish , good size about a kilo followed by another of similar size. Tommy Strengulsund also had a couple then it slowed down for most except for Niklas and Jesper near the bridge who continued to take a steady amount of Bream .
With three in my net my target was to get at least 3rd place however my bites became rare and i could not compete with the red balls of joker being placed by the rest of the field . I had one more fish on , the largest of the day , foul hooked . I slipped it in the net and just as i started to move it towards me the thing took of and pulled the hook , lost fish . I took a Perch and lost another Bream - match over for me as the joker Boys were 'creaming it' . With an hour to go and a long journey to South Stockholm (Sodertalje) i packed and by end of the match my gear was loaded in a crowded , packed car. I emptied my net of 4 fish (approx. 4 kilos ) I said my goodbyes to the guys and went to the station to get Carola with suitcase .
Bitterly disappointed as i honestly knew i could compete but i was let down.
I look forward to next years match and i will not be short of bait !!!
