The London Youth Games

The 14th of June was a crucial day for the Greenwich team - as this was the playoffs for the London Youth Games Finals and all the boroughs were there. The match was held at the Horseshoe Lake at Tylers Common in Brentwood. The lake as you can guess, is a giant horseshoe-shape and has a vast array of islands throughout it. It is only around 4 foot deep all the way through and has been voted as one of the best match lakes to fish.

We got there slightly early so the other members of the team Luke and Alfie and myself, went to have a little look at the lake, which was nice and we had our little discussions on how we would fish it etc. We were then called up as we needed to pick our pegs, and an hour later we were off fishing.

The day proved to be a fish-filled one as I never had the chance to eat my lunch - I was catching so much!

From the moment I put the bait in the water I couldn’t stop catching roach, rudd, perch, skimmers and carp all day. Luke and Alfie were all catching quite nicely and when the day was up and the match was over, we went in for the weigh-ins. I was on peg 6 so I was early to get weighed, and when they took the keepnet out I was shocked, I had never seen that many fish in my keepnet before in my life! I needed two weigh-ins, the first one came to 10lbs 5oz and the second was 9lbs 4oz so overall, gave me a total of 19lbs 9oz.

Here’s a pic of the second weigh in

The end results for us were:

Ashley - 19lbs 9oz
Luke - 20lbs 10oz
Alfie - 9lbs 4oz

Which overall gave us 2nd place, we needed to come in the top five to get in the finals - so we were in!

The Finals
The finals of the London Youth Games on the 9th of July (which soon came) was a fun-filled one. The team met up at Woolwich Dockyard at 6:45am to get all our tactics and gear/bait sorted and we were off.

We arrived really early - so it was time for discussions on the tactics and methods we would be using as well as lots of questions to the many bailiffs that patrol around the lake. Finally, it was time to draw the pegs and Luke drew peg 7, so we had peg 7, 17 and 27 - (they added on 10 to the first number twice to do the pegs) . I chose to have peg 17, and here’s a view of it...



You may be able to see Luke opposite me (top right of the pic).


The fishing was really slow, with me catching the first fish on the lake, a little perch not even an ounce but it still counted and it went in the net. Following that came another 7 or 8 perch, and then the lake died. That was until my float shot under and stayed there and I hooked in to something big, which took me through the lilies and through a further three swims before pulling out. A big disappointment, but it was still early days.

I was then in to a nice skimmer shortly after. Then the manager came along to say hello and he must have brought a bit of good luck as my float went under and my clutch went screaming away. If that wasn't good enough, the press came along as I was playing the carp and were taking photo's for the local newspaper!

They got a few pics of me finally landing a 6lb 5oz carp. I then had to shout "SCALES" to get a couple of blokes run to the rescue to weigh the fish. The day then progressed slowly with me snapping off at another carp and catching a further two more skimmer bream.

Luke on the other hand had caught a good carp of 12lbs 4oz as well as 1lb 2oz of small fish. Alfie had 1lbs 8oz of fish in the end, a nice skimmer and a small perch and in my keepnet, excluding the carp, I had 1lbs 8oz of fish. So overall I had 7lbs 13 oz of fish, Alfie had 1lbs 8oz of fish and Luke had 13lbs 6oz of fish.

The match finished at 3:30 we were pretty upset before the places were called out as we know for a fact we hadn't won, judging by the amount of people shouting "scales!" several times, so we thought we were well low down, like 8th or something.

We were then having a little chat about, "oh well, we had a good day anyway, it was a good experience" and the manager was the same - he had even bought us skipping ropes to train for next year to take the mickey (!) - and then the dreaded moment arrived...the announcement.

We all thought we had done really rubbish so we were not expecting a place even in the top 5 out of the 10 boroughs in the finals....and then the official called out...

"3rd......Greenwich!"

And our faces lit up, we had got a bronze!!!

The manager was over the moon and ACTUALLY started crying it as it was the furthest his team had ever got in the Games and we all went up to collect our bronze medals - manager and all. A very emotional day for us all, and I can't stop smiling.

WELL DONE TO THE GREENWICH TEAM!!!
ME, LUKE AND ALFIE WE DID IT, WE GOT A GREAT RESULT.
MANY THANKS TO DELL, LUKE'S MUM, NAN AND GRANDAD, DELLS MISSUS, REG, STU, DOUG , JAN AND THE REST OF THE GREENWICH SUPPORTERS FOR BEING BEHIND US ALL THE WAY
WE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU ALL, THANK YOU!!!


Our Bronze medals - (Ashley, Luke and Alfie )

Tip of the month:
The days are still getting warmer so stay on the top for all of those carp all you speci hunters, but if you would rather sit behind a buzzer, try to find the depth of the area you want to fish and set up a zig-rig with a pop-up bait.

Remember - when looking at the water constantly, the reflection of the sun can damage your eyes, wearing polarised sunglasses will reduce the glare and save your eyesight.

If float fishing, still have it on the bottom but instead of putting loads of shot on your line, fish on the drop or with a size 8 or 10 shot about 5 inches above your hook. The smaller fish should take the bait on the drop and if not, you have a perfectly set bottom bait!

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
I will be happy to answer any questions you throw at me!

E-Mail: ashley@tackletek.co.uk