Marshal art.. Andy Chambers joined the team and suddenly the vision was back on track


‘The World Carp Classics are occasions, a


gathering of the clans .. family


gatherings if you like, because I have always felt


that carp anglers are family’


t


anglers. Matches are always going to be peggy but the more people who feel they have a chance prior to the draw being made the more support an event is going to get.


he second Orient event was a good one. Although only a handful of carp were caught they came from different parts of the lake and all the competitors felt


they were in with a chance right up to the death. I was non-fi shing captain of our team


that year because I was suffering from an agonising (slightly painful to most of you) tooth abscess that sidelined me. The fact that two of our three pairs caught and we won the team title suggested that my being non-fi shing captain wasn’t such a bad thing. George Csonka, my substitute, caught: need I say more? I think we came away from the Orient feeling that the event was defi nitely headed in the right direction. OK there were very few carp caught, but that’s big-water carping. The French call these events ‘enduros’, which I feel is a good name for them. They are an endurance test, not a bleak-bashing contest. ‘What is your biggest thrill to date?’


was one of the questions Ross included in his brief. Well winning the team title


at Orient in 2007 was a thrill and a real feather in our cap. To follow that up by winning the team event at Madine in 2008, and then again in 2009 has been exciting in the extreme. Not only that but team members Mark Bartlett and Kevin Hewitt came second in 2008, and Tom Duncan-Dunlop and Rob Tough capped this with their runaway win it in 2009! Each successive team triumph has seemed more unlikely than the last, which has made each year’s win a real source of pride to all the Carpworld team involved in the event, and their sponsors, Mainline Baits. But to me the fi shing side of the


match has always been just a part of the whole. The World Carp Classics are occasions, a gathering of the clans not just from Europe but from all over the World: family gatherings if you like, because I have always felt that carp anglers are family. We are not normal in the every day sense of the word, but collectively we are because we are all fuelled by the same energy, the love of carp. We are normal in each other’s eyes and the World Carp Classic meetings are a celebration of that normality. My partner Lee Jackson and I both caught our only WCC carp on the


fi rst night of the fi rst event in 1998, but we keep coming back for more, and looking forward to it, too! Normal? I rest my case... Anyone looking in from the outside and thinking of these occasions as mere matches is missing the point. The return to Lac de Madine has


meant that the WCC has come of age. There have been a number of major changes since the event was last fi shed at Madine in 2000. The organisation has got better, far more bank space is now being pegged, boats are now being used there, and the water is shut to other water-using pursuits for the duration of the event. The fact that there are now qualifying events in a number of countries speaks for itself and emphasises how much the support for the event has expanded over the last three years. If Ross’s original dream was to create an event which is the equivalent of his global golf pairs’ competition then he must be fast approaching achieving that as a reality. It is by far the biggest annual event on the carp fi shing calendar, and long may it continue. One man has been responsible for making that happen: well done Ross Honey, the man with a twentieth century vision which has become a twenty-fi rst century reality.


Magazine sponsored by Pescalis www.pescalis.com


Caption here? Posing with our Carpworld team which has won at Madine for the last two years, making a hat-trick of team wins.


27


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