Catch of the year 2009


S


STEVE Tom, fi rst off, huge congratulations to you and Rob on your outstanding success!


TOM Thanks, Steve. I must say it has been really hectic for us both since winning the event and although it was impossible to keep up with all of the text messages and emails from all of the kind well-wishers, we want everyone to know that we both really appreciated them.


STEVEOkay, let’s take it from the peg draw, Tom. Did you have a list of pegs that you favoured above others, and how did you go about selecting them?


TOM We carried out extensive ground- work, asking anglers who regularly fi shed on Madine lots of questions and fi nding out as much information as possible. We plotted out a map, charting


where fi sh had been caught from, including those from the year before, and using the information gathered we built a hit-list of pegs we wanted. There were around 58 prime swims that we re- ally liked, and another 28 middle-order pegs that were ok. We didn’t fancy any of the remain-


ing pegs and had agreed that if we drew one of those we would put it back and hope


Cheque this out!


The boy’s £10,000 winnings


for something better on our second draw.


Rob drew the fi rst pot and it was


one of our middle-order pegs, ATT peg 2, and Rob said “what do you want to do?” Knowing by this stage that there


were a lot of really good pegs still left in there, I said “gamble”. I put my hand deep into the bag, trying to avoid pick- ing out one of the previously rejected pegs, praying


that the gamble would pay off. When it was announced that our peg was in the Pescalis section I was happy, but it wasn’t until we had left the stage that it dawned upon me which peg it was! It was actually a bit unnerving as,


although it was a fancied swim, there was no guarantee at all that any fi sh would be there.


There are far too many


aspects that can infl uence where they’ll be to be too confi dent, and in some respects, the pressure was on. Nothing is decided at the peg draw, and contrary to popular belief, the peg that we drew was not the peg that the competition was won from in 2008. Ours was the peg alongside it, with


the winning peg from last year now be- ing occupied by two French anglers.


STEVE It’s fair to say that some anglers are not fl exible enough to take full advantage of a situation and arriving at a venue with an infl exible approach or tactics can often lead to failure. With that fl exibility in mind, do you feel that this aspect put a few more fi sh on the bank for you?


TOM Yes, defi nitely. We had every


possible situation covered. For instance, we had bottle fl oats and fl oating braid which we had to use on one rod, to keep the line high in the water to avoid it being dragged into snags by kiting fi sh. On that particular rod, I was


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targeting an area of water that was just over one meter deep, and as such I felt that some rigs could be too obvious, ultimately spooking the fi sh. For that rod, the ideal solution was at hand, a weed effect rig that myself, Kevin Garratt and


Martin Locke of Solar tackle have been developing over the past two years. The weed effect components


10 Magazine sponsored by Pescalis www.pescalis.com


World Carp Classic Champions 2009 Tom Duncan-


Dunlop and Rob


Tough had barely recovered from lifting the World


Carp Classic title before WCC


magazine Editor, Steve Howard,


interviewed Tom. Here’s what transpired


include hair rigs, leads, lead core and chod rigs, and are absolutely devastat- ing when used in this situation. Unfortu- nately, we lost what would have been the fi rst fi sh of the competition on that rod when it kited and left my hook lodged in the woodwork! So, adapt- ing to the situation, the bottle fl oat was employed from then on, and it worked extremely well as there were a lot of tree stumps out in that area. We both agreed that we would ease into things and avoid going out in the boat po- tentially disturbing the swim, and used Rob’s Baitboat with graphic sounder to position our baits for that fi rst night. We were fortunate that our peg was


quite a bit above water level, as that allowed us to clearly see the holes and channels in the weed. On day two we decided to go out and see if we could determine some better spots to fi sh to but, talking to Rob on the 2-way radio, it was mostly fl at and uninteresting until he found an area of broken ground. That proved to be a very good spot right through the competition. It helped immensely that Rob and I are not just angling partners, but very good friends


WCC winners 2009


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