Competitions

ENGLAND LADIES CARP TEAM MISS MEDAL ON TOUGH LATVIAN VENUE

 

‘Challenging’ was Angling Trust England Ladies Carp Team Manager Adam Dowd’s summary of this year’s World Championships on Latvian water Lake Balote – a venue that many thought would be extremely prolific, but which turned out to be a much, much tougher nut to crack.

Finishing in sixth place after 72 hours of fishing, there was still a chance of a bronze medal going into the final night as England slowly began climbing back up their respective sections, but it wasn’t quite to be, their final 16-point tally tying with France but losing out on total fish numbers.

The medals went to local sides, Latvia winning on an impressive five points, Romania taking silver with seven and Lithuania third on 11.

Top performers for England were the duo of Nicola Gordon and Chloe Dodson-Shanks who took fourth in C section, with Kayleigh Dowd and Ellen Beedham in B section and Toni Bevilacqua and Penny Gidlow in A finishing sixth in their sections.

“The fishing has been a lot harder than expected – in the Latvian National Champs a few weeks beforehand there were a lot of carp caught and even the local organisers were surprised at how tough it was,” Adam said. “They were expecting over 500 carp being caught by the winning pairing, but that turned out to be nearer 75!”

“It took a lot of teams by surprise, but once we got to grips with the lake, we started to climb back up each section and going into the final night, we had a very real chance of finishing third,” he continued.

“Unfortunately, we had a bit of a slow 12 hours and combined with some very big fish being caught elsewhere, it checked the momentum a little bit. Even so, the team has been brilliant, and everyone has worked together, from the anglers to the backroom staff. It just wasn’t the result we wanted!”

 

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