Fly Fishing: President's Team win Barclays Bank National

John Wilson the Barclays Bank Fly Fishing President dedicated

the win to Paul Elliot who has fished for the club for many years.

We were hoping to get Paul along to fish this year but as he undergoes another batch of chemotherapy the club wish him all the best. John Wilson, Neil O'shea, Karen O'shea and Martin Williams caught 22 fish for 59lbs 3oz to lift the team trophy.

Mike Philpott had the The biggest fish Trophy was shared Martin Williams had

best catch of the day between Gerald Farnell and John the most fish with 8

with 8 fish for 21lbs 8 ozs Wilson, 5lbs 10oz Rainbows for 20lbs 10oz

What another excellent two days! Although I had to organise it with Mike it went off smoothly and I enjoyed the fishing more than I was expecting.

Practice day went well and we managed to get all the way round. The Di5 and a tequila blob seemed to be working best. We had fish on a damsel but I just didn't feel I could catch on a natural even though there were fly's hatching and a few fish on top. The high winds seemed to have churned up the shoals and coloured the water but it was clearing fast. After the high winds this week it was a nice ripple and strengthened slightly during the day.

We started a dream catching big fish just outside the boat dock and as you can see here Mike is taking the fly from a 5 pounder.

With that spot in the bag we drifted all our way round finding bigger fish at Dunns bay and rainbow corner. With 3 main spots and a method we were ready for the competition.

Would you believe it, it was a complete change on the competition day and even the wind had gone around 180 degrees. The boat dock was devoid of fish and so was Dunns Bay. We managed to pick up one a piece near the tower, I had decided to reel in and bang a fish was on. Mike said they might need roly poly, and bang he was in to. It still went quite. We had heard that Karen O'shea had 3 on a single drift and Powie and Clarky one each in rainbow corner so although it was a difficult morning we still had to work hard.

The day completely changed for me when Mike had his next fish off the inlet on a size 14 Cruncher. It suddenly proved that they would take the naturals if they were in front of them. I then rigged up the midge tip with a Damsel, hares ear and cruncher and was feeling confident. This is when the Micky take started that i couldn't catch them properly. The next 4 fish were lucky - it does help!! I had one as I pulled in to a short line, started the motor out of gear, lifted my rod and thank you very much! The next I was convinced took correctly but turned out to be foul hooked! Then I cast out, got off my seat to get lunch and of it went, finally as we cut the motor and cast in it took the fly off the top. It proved to me that they would take the fly static and this helped later.

Karen and Neil, Powie and Clarky had added any more, Tony Hague and Dave Kilburn were anchored up as were Phil Kidd and Martyn Denton. Doug Scott and Vernon Beak (aka Charlie Drake) were also persevering but struggling. A move was needed!

We decided to see if other fish had woken up now that the wind had got up a bit so decided to start off the boat dock. As we pulled in, I couldn't believe that the only other boat on the water that had found these fish was Dave Currie and Bill Robinson, trust Dave! As we drifted behind Dave had a fish on but i kept seeing Simon Summers and Derek Thompson bending into fish off the dam, so over we went to drift alongside and bang we were in. We then proceeded to finish off our limits by 4 pm on a mixture of the same flies.

We were sitting pretty at this time but the fish gradually came on the feed and a good number of people took advantage especially Neil o'Shea and Paul Ravenscroft who took 6 and four fish in the last hour. Fortunately a good number of people caught in this last hour and made a great difference to the overall competition making sure that most people caught fish. A few others bucked this trend and caught steadily through the day at anchor including Shane Tibbetts and Neil Felton and Dave Sutton-Lloyd and Gerald Farnell. The rain managed to keep off thankfully and it only started raining as we we tucked into our meal. After the prize giving we managed to down a few pints to round off a great few days.

The other results were:
Second Place was Barclaycard with 58lbs 5oz and Ian Pow, Kev Rowley, John Clarke and Mike Philpott