Day 1 practice
Cudmore fishery had spent a lot of time and money in preparation for this years Fish O Mania. The lake was completely drained and restocked. Franks first visit saw him catch plenty of fish on worms and casters shallow, his best catch rate was 15 carp in 8 minutes. The new stocky carp ranged from 6 to 8oz a piece, a few bigger specimens up to 6lb.
Day 2 practice
Frank, brought myself, Raplh, and Glen for a small line up. Line ups are about trying to figure out the "do's and don'ts". I hate when I've fished in line ups for various teams over the years and all I've tried to do is catch the most fish to prove to other team mates that a worthy to fish for the team. This becomes unproductive as you don't share ideas and you don't fine tune.
Day 3
The lake is definitely slowing down, the fish have a been caught a few times, everyday for the last week and therefore have wised up!!! Method does seem to lean towards fishing the pole with worms and micro pellet mush, but sometimes feeding neat worm brings the fish straight back normally. Dumping bait via a big pot isn't the key, maybe worth a tench or two at six meters, but only able to catch very short periods, so this was going to be Franks throw away line. Remember that Fish O Mania pay £1000 for the biggest fish. Only three prizes in the Fish O Mania, first prize is £30,000, second prize is £5000 and £1000 for the biggest fish.
Day 4
The species that Frank was catching was mainly fish from 4oz to 10oz fish. Little carp, Ide, And Tench.
There is some bigger fish, 1lb skimmers. Tench between 1lb to 2lb 8oz. Carp up to 4lb. We predict that 5lb fish is likely to win the biggest fish price (£1000). The biggest fish we caught was a 2lb 15oz carp in all the four days we practiced.
Biggest fish on this day was a 2lb ish common carp.
The Final
Frank drew peg 5 which is the area you wanted to be, so the draw gods were in Franks favour. We were told that pegs 2 to 9 is where you ideally wanted to be.
The atmosphere was electric, Frank had a lot of support.
The match didn't go to plan unfortunately, the wind was bad and the tow of the lake was shocking. Worms was a key bait, as Frank could fish it over depth and hold back. However the pole line wasn't strong and the turning point was the method feeder to the island. This proved to be very important and won Jamie Hughes the match. Congratulations to Jamie Hughes for winning Fish O Mania for the second time.
