British Lure Angling Championships, Froxfield qualifier.

 After a 0430 start and a two hour drive I found myself on the banks of the Kennet and Avon canal at Froxfield for the second qualifier of the BLAC. After chatting with Adam Kirby and Dan Sissons for a bit, rigging up and getting a much needed bacon sandwich down my neck all 50 anglers competing gathered for the draw. I was drawn with Greg Bafia, a great guy and a great angler to. Greg and I planned to fish our way down from the start area through stretch B and C and fish back up later in the day.

map of the venue

And so at 0830 off we went, just down stream of the start area two barges were moored and greg and I both had hits from perch but failed to land them, then it all went quiet. This series of events repeated itself throughout the day. I did plan to video the competition with my gopro but 20 minutes in it ran out of memory on its SD card school boy error..... 

Greg fishing tight to the far bank.

 We leapfrogged down the stretch taking turns to fish new spots, Greg managed a few small perch from the far bank and I managed to loose two.... By 1200 I still had a blank score sheet. As we moved further down stretch C we came across Dan who had managed a few small perch on LRF gear and it seemed that all of the competitors were struggling a bit. In the car on the way up I realised I had left my spool of fluorocarbon at home, eventually the inevitable happened and a clumsy cast saw me snap up on the opposite bank... Greg kindly gave me a few feet of 7lb fluro and I rigged up with a drop shot rig to try and tempt the micro perch in the area. 

My setup for the day was a Shimano Sustain 2500 loaded with 12lb ygk braid and my newly purchased hearty rise bassforce es 6'9" 4-18g. A great rod which is going to get a lot of use, my only problem with it is the rings, they just don't live up to the quality that the rest of the rod has and I can see myself changing them in the future.

Around 1300 I managed to land a pike of 56cm and finally scored some points, I was getting a bit despondent but when my ecogear grass minnow L got hit by this fish my spirits were instantly lifted. Sorry, no pictures of the fish as i was busy measuring it and getting it signed off on my score sheet. By this point Greg had managed a few more small perch and some micro pike.

As the afternoon went on we headed back to the start area to see if we could catch a few of the perch by the boats that we had failed to land earlier in the day but boat traffic had stirred up the canal bed and the fish had moved on. I switched to a Neko rig in an attempt to try and catch a few of the finicky perch but to no avail.

Neko rigged 2" flash J

Greg had another micro pike and Dean Pilgrim's partner caught a lovely perch measuring 36cm and weighing 2lb4oz. 

36cm on the Raw Finesse mini scale

2lb4oz

1500 came and the competition ended, score sheets were handed in and showed just how tough the day had been with 26 out of the 50 competitors blanking. Scores were counted and the results were announced, congratulations to those who qualified, especially to Greg my partner. Thank you to Julian Chidgey for organising such a well run event. 

all the competitors after the days fishing

the top 6

In September I will be competing at the Regents canal qualifier, and after seeing how effective the LRF gear was on the day and how well Adam did at the Exeter qualifier I know what gear I will be taking. 

After a quick pint in the local pub it was time to head back home, and after not eating much all day a Chinese takeaway would do nicely!

Just a quick note to end on, if you are an LRF angler and read this months sea angler, you'll find an appallingly incorrect article supposedly on the subject of LRF, if you've read it you'll know what I'm on about.

Tight lines,

John