Everyone at Gardner wants to congratulate The Irish National Carp Fishing Team for their superb performance at the World Carp Classic in Madine, France in September. After dominating the event, leading comfortably during the first 3 days, the team finally finished an impressive 8th place, an excellent result expecially for their first crack at the event. Very well done guys, we salute your classy captures and look forward to supporting you again next year.

The Irish Team featured Frank Melia (32) from Trim in Meath, Dan O'Kelly (32) from Tallaght in Dublin and Vinney  Byrne (40) from Lucan in Kildare. Vinney, the team runner, is the current Irish Carp Champion and Dan was the Irish Carp Champion in 2005. They are all regular visitors to the waters in France. The team were sponsored by Gardner and Heathrow Baits Services for the event and as the competition went so well for them, they are all ready making plans to have a 6 man team for a shot at grabbing the title next year.

The competition started perfectly for the team. 5 runs on the first night, done by the mussells twice including a tantalising common of around 35-40lbs. But Dan managed to grab three excellent carp of 14lbs, 38lbs and 43.4lbs and Frank also had a 30.2lbs before their luck turned and the fish moved away on the third night. And that was it...no more runs after that.

As a field tester for Gardner this year, Dan kindly agreed to write an account of their mixed fortunes but fantastic effort at the event:

Fishing the World Carp Classic, by Dan O'Kelly

* Dedicated in memory of John McDonnell *

Surprise Beginnings…

Now where to start? I suppose it started about 3 months ago when a friend of mine Frank rang me from Ireland to ask me if I would be interested in fishing the World Carp Classic. Frank had had the idea of an Irish entry in the World Carp Classic for some time now and had contacted the organizers of the competition and booked a place and had also generously paid the 850 sterling entry fee. 

Tragic turn of events…

Another good friend of ours John Mc Donnell was meant to team up with Frank, but sadly John was diagnosed with cancer at Christmas and passed away in July, which is a real shame as he would have loved to fish Madine. He really aspired to the big French waters and would have been a force to be reckoned with on the bank and will be missed on the bank by all Irish carp anglers.

Sort out a good boat…

As I was a very good friend of Johns, Frank wanted me to fish with him in John’s place so how could I refuse? We then started all the organizing for the competition. Vinney Byrne selflessly offered the lend of his boat and to be the team runner. He also organized the insurance, each pair and team runner has to be insured plus the boat for third party liability. The boat must also have attached to it a fog horn, 25 meters of rope for the anchor, 25 meters of rope for towing purposes, plus a bailer must be attached to the boat and the row locks also. These are all little things but they can make the difference in a life or death situation and would all be checked before the competition started. If you were short of one of these things your boat would not pass the boat check and that would mean you would have to cast your rods out. This is not an ideal situation when everyone around you has got a boat.

Sponsorship deal…

With the boat and insurance sorted I then was left with the task of getting sponsorship. In my work at Etang de Brigueuil I work closely with Gardner Tackle so they were my first port of call. A few emails later and they gladly offered to sponsor us and then went one step further and contacted Heathrow Baits Services on our behalf who generously offered to sponsor us as well.

Homework and preparation…

So things were starting to take shape and excitement was starting to build. Now it was time to do our homework on the lake. Countless hours were spent on the phone from France to Ireland between me Vinney and Frank, which I’m sure has not helped our phone bills and will be a shock when the bill rolls in. But we had to talk tactics/baits/rigs etc. From what we could find out from scanning the internet and asking questions on the World Carp Classic forum line was that we had a few hurdles to get over.

For starters we had bream and tench to deal with so 24mm baits were the order of the day and I asked Heathrow Baits to roll us some 24mm Supa Stench. I though that a fishy bait would be good for this time of year. There did not seem to be any poisson chats to deal with which was a great relief, which makes for a better and more enjoyable week’s fishing, knowing that they are not eating your nice bait. Kelp beds on the other hand were something to worry about as they were full of mussels and more than likely where the carp would be knocking about, so strong abrasive line was needed and as we would be fishing at long distances braid was the obvious choice.

Get the best gear for the job…

There is also a line of kelp about 20 yards in front of most swims and it was advised that all fish must be landed from a boat so we needed hooks that we could believe in while we got the boat in to action - Gardner’s Incizors Size 4`s were trusted with the job. They have done the job in the past for me and I had the utmost faith in them. After that we needed H-Bloks. You were allowed to drop no more than 8 H-Bloks in your swim so that was another thing on the list from Gardner.

Electric engines were vital for the task also and batteries. Vinney assured us that he had two batteries and that they would both last the week and there was nothing to worry about and Frank had two as well. After many check’s and rechecks we were finally satisfied that we had everything that we needed. All we had to do now…was wait.

Travel arrangements…

As the date of the competition got closer our excitement grew along with our nerves. My car broke down a few weeks before the competition and I had to borrow a 25 year old Jetta to do the 800km drive from Etang de Brigueuil to Madine. Frank and Vinney had a much longer journey coming from Ireland. They had to leave on the Thursday from Rosslare on a 17 hour ferry trip to Roscoff, which landed on the Friday at 11am and then they had to drive 900kms to Madine, passing Paris on the way, where they got stuck for 4 hours.

By the time they arrived at HQ. I had been there for five hours and had met a few of the anglers that I had been talking to on the net namely Rodders and Dick (the only Scottish entry) and Steve Howard. The beers were starting to flow and the Craig was good. There were a few bivvies set up in the bivvy city beside HQ but they were starting to mushroom up all over the place and the atmosphere was starting to grow. A few beers were starting to disappear and big Madine carp was the topic of conversation. Around 10 o’clock Vinney and Frank finally arrived, after a much need stretch of the legs they started on the beer. I think we hit the sack quite drunk at about 4am that night.

Scout the venue…

Nursing a hang over on the Saturday after having a hot dog breakfast we decided to go and have a look around at some of the swims. You did not have choice of swim in the draw but we though it would be a good idea to have a look at some of them, plus we had never been to Madine and were just curious. It was not easy to get to most of the swims by car but we did get to see a few down at the south end of the lake.

The areas looked good and were in the Carp Cabin section but there was a 20 yards walk into the water to get the rods out in some of the swims. We later got info that some of the regulars on the lake tipped these swims to win it. These swims were now prime pieces of real estate and most anglers were lusting after them. The swims on the big island, apart from a few down one end you could not give away and anglers dreaded the thought of getting them. Although if you listened to all the info you were getting in the Bivvy camp you would end up being rightly confused, like trying to get tips at a horse race.

Peg draw…

The peg draw was to take place on the Sunday after the opening ceremony and gala dinner. It was a bit of a nightmare really. Frank did not want to do the draw in case he drew a bad one and I was the same so we decided on a ‘rock, paper, scissors’ approach. But Frank bottled it and stung me with the task. We had registered the boat and paper work the day before and were the 17th to do so, which meant we got called up 17th for the peg draw. I drew the one we did not want - peg 3 on the Pescalis section on the big island slap bang in the middle of the north facing bank.

There were 45 other teams on the big island so I suppose you had a 1 in 3 chance of getting it. A big cloud came over us, we were not happy about this, made worse by Rodders saying "you blew it". Thanks Rodders! He had drawn one of the pegs down the south of the lake in the Carps Cabin section and was quite happy with himself and quite happy to rub our noses in it.

More “preparation”…

We stayed for a few beers before we went to bed early as we had an early start in the morning. The barge that was to bring us to the island was starting at 7am. We got directions from the organizers on how to get to the departure spot. But the next day we could not find it and ended up at the wrong dock. A while later and a few wrong turns and we found the right dock; we loaded up Vinney’s boat and connected up one of his big batteries.

One of the one’s he swore blind was charged and would last the week - you guessed it - was flat as a pancake. We tried the other one but it was the same. For all the talk of these great big batteries between the both of them they did not get us out of the harbor, we had to tie the boat to the massive metal barge that was taking the rest of our gear and when we got out of the harbor and the skipper opened up the engine .the nose of our boat went under and started taking on a lot of water. Panic set in and a shout to the skipper stopped the metal barge and some retying and reorganizing took place, until we were happy with it, then we set sail again. Luckily enough the barge landed between swim 3 and 4 so we had a small walk with the gear.

Set up…

We did not like the look of our swim it was on a 20ft high bank, on very open ground. It had a kelp bed about 20 yards out and 3 yards wide and we were right in the middle of 20 other pairs. The only thing we had different was about 300 yards out there was a massive kelp bed and it was right in front of us. We would have to wait till 3 o’clock to check it out, as the competition did not start till then and you were not allowed in your boat for any reason till then.

So we set about getting the bivvies up and sorting out particles etc and getting the rods together while Vinney made us some lunch. At first we were not happy with the swim but this kelp bed in front of us was lifting moral in the camp; there was a new air of optimism.

The Start…

A rocket went through the air at 3 o clock signaling the start of the competition. There was a rush to the boats, anglers all dying to see what underwater features and depth’s they had. Alas there was not much to know, after the kelp bed 20 yards in front of us the water dropped to 6ft and stayed that way all the way out to the far kelp beds in some places reaching 7ft.

The first 150 meters the ground was free of weed, but after that there was a 1 to 2 foot bed of weed on the bottom, making it basically unfishable apart from zigs if you fancied that.

The next clear bottom was around the far kelp beds, so after a quick pow-wow we decided to fish one rod on a snowman, a 20mm Supa Stench with a 16mm Indian Spice pop-up on top, just over the near kelp bed and two rods on the far kelp bed on 24mm Supa Stench, so as to stop Mr Bream spoiling our party. The last rod would be placed on the clear ground about 140 meters out near where the bottom weed started and marked with a Gardner H-Blok, as the far rods would also be.

Baiting Up…

The far kelp beds were plain to see during day light hours but at night would be a different matter, the H-Bloks are much handier to find with the head torches. Frank would fish one rod mid range and one long range and I would fish one in the margin and one long range. We baited and set the rods around 5 o’clock. We did not go heavy on the bait, about 1/2 of a kg of mixed sizes of Supa Stench boilies from Heathrow Baits and a kilo of pellet and the same of particles on each rod.

The pellet and particles were all soaked in the brand new Supa Stench Reactor Dip from the previous week. We then sat back to take in the atmosphere, have a beer and watched the water hoping to see a fish jump near our bait.

Patience…

After a few beers we were in much better mood and we were feeling very confident about our chances. As we were fishing a zone that was not normally zoned for night fishing, I though that our best chance would be in the first two nights then the fish would cotton on and move out.

I felt really confident about the two rods out on the far kelp bed and at about 10 o clock things started to happen, my rod on the far kelp bed spun off, after striking it I was straight into the boat to land it. With the kelp bed in front of us it would have been impossible to land a fish through it, so we had been advised to land all fish from the boat. So that’s what I did and within 15 minutes I saw the fish for the first time, it was a mirror of about mid thirty from what I could make out. It stayed on the top for about 20 minutes and I thought it was getting ready for the net. But I was wrong very wrong. She got a look at the boat and just went down and she stayed down and I did not see her for the next 40 minutes, at which stage she had pulled me half way across the lake.

Fight hard…

I could not make out how far out I was at this stage, it was pitch black and all I could see was head torches in the distance but I knew I must have been 800 yards out. Then finally I got a look at her again then another look and I knew she was getting tired and soon after she was in the net.

All boats were to have a landing mat in the boat, but I was too far out to put the fish in the boat. So I had to hold her in the net for the trip back and with the fish pulling at the side of the boat. It would be a long track back to the bank. I held on to the net for dear life all the way back and I thought I would never reach the shore. I knew that Vinney and Frank would be very anxious to see what I had.

When I completed what must have been psychologically the longest boat trip of my life, Frank and Vinney were on the bank to greet me like little school children. It was only when we pulled the fish out that I got a good look at her and she was bigger then I’d first thought. We got her on the mat, and then weighed her; she pulled the scales around to 43.4lbs.

Success!

Happy days, my biggest carp ever and we were in the lead and it only took me just under two hours to land her, a very long fight but when you’re in a boat, it’s very hard to put any pressure on the fish and they can pull you around and the wind pushing you across the lake doesn’t help. Credit to Gardner’s size 4 Incizors for holding on that long. The fish had no other hook marks in her mouth and my hook holds were neat and had not moved during the fight.

Vinney went off to get the marshal to officially weigh the fish and I sacked her till he returned. Dave and Chris were the marshals for our section and they returned with Vinney about ten minutes later. The official scales were pulled around to 19.5kgs a little shy of my weight but that did not matter. We then re-sacked the fish as all fish were to be photographed by the official camera men in the morning.

The rod was replaced and we sat down for a beer with the marshals. I was only sitting down about 10 minutes and my margin rod on the right beside the near kelp bed was away. Straight into the boat again as this fish was already in the kelp. I got past the fish and saw it was only small but they all count in competition and after a short spirited fight which saw the fish get me in the kelp three times it was in the net. 6.4kgs was the weight recorded - not a monster but pushed us further into the lead.

In the lead!

The rod was replaced and we sat back and tried to contemplate what was actually happening - we were winning! 20 minutes later Frank’s rod on the far kelp bed was away. There was a stiff bend in the rod then “snap”, his line parted. The line was 65lbs braid and should not have broken and that left us puzzled. But all we could do was replace the rod and wonder what had happened. A few theories were put forward, mussels or a bad knot. We were leaning towards mussels, which later turned out to be the case.

Later in the night after I just got into bed, I had another run from the far kelp bed and this time it was in the kelp and I was not going out alone. With the previous fish from the far kelp I did not drop the mud anchor and that was why I ended up near the far side of the lake. So this time Vinney came out with me to control the boat and the anchor for me.

When we got to the fish it was deep in the kelp and after a lot of pulling and dragging the fish finally emerged and we got a good look at it. It was not more then 10 ft from the boat and it was a common about 35lbs to 40lbs and as soon as it was clear of the kelp it made a massive run. I quickly loosened the drag and gave it line, it stopped and made another run and then my line parted.

On closer examination we could see that my 25lbs coated braid rig had snapped in the middle. Which brought us back to the mussels… This was not going to happen again; new rigs were made, this time out of 90lbs braid, the rod was replaced and it was back to bed.

I’m not sure how long after that as I was quite tired at this stage but Frank’s far rod was spinning off again. Frank played this fish from the bank as long as he could. We had decided to play the fish from the bank till we got it about 100 yards from the shore then to go out in the boat, drop the mud anchor to land it . But the fish got caught up in weed a good bit out and Frank had to go to the boat.

He disappeared into the night and all me and Vinney could do was to wait and wonder. He returned about 20 minutes later with a fish in tow. Happy days! We needed another fish to lift the mood after losing the last two. We weighed the fish at 30.2lbs but did not call the marshals as it was 6 am at this stage and the sun was coming up and the fish was to be held for the official photos in the morning. So we crawled back to bed tired…but very happy.

Still in the lead…

9 o’ clock the next day Leon and a film crew from Holland and one from Poland came around to photograph the fish and the marshals were called to officially weigh Frank’s fish. The official weight recorded was 13.45kgs, that added to my 19.5kg and my little 6.4kg gave us 39.35kg and after a quick check with the marshals confirmed our suspicions - we were still in the lead although a 22kgs (48.4lbs) had been caught on the other side of the island and was winning the biggest fish award. Dave Lane had taken the first fish prize an hour and a half into the competition with a 5kg fish.

The rest of that day was spent waiting for the night to come around again.  We decided to stick to our baiting plan for the next night. We were quite happy that the Supa Stench would do the business again, adopting the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it approach”.

Controversy…

We prepared for another long night but as we were just putting our bait out that night the marshals approached us and told us that one of the other competitors had complained about the distance we were fishing. This seemed a bit strange as many other competitors were fishing the same distance. One pair had four illuminated makers for all to see out the same distance as us and there was not a word about it, the only difference was they had not caught any fish so it was not a problem.

We already had one rod on the spot so we left it there and had to re-plan our baiting for the other rod. Morale in the camp was low. We knew that if we had any chance to stay in the lead we needed to be fishing the far kelp bed. This was further compounded by the fact that the only run we had that night was on my rod, the one that was left on the kelp bed, and it came at about 11 pm and we could not put it back there.

The landing of this fish was a lot smoother. I managed to get a good bit of line on the fish before we hit the boat. We got out about 100 yards, just enough so the fish did not run behind us back into the backside kelp and there we dropped the mud anchor. The wind was a bit stronger this night and Vinney had to skillfully keep the boat straight with the oars and I played the fish out the back of the boat.

The fight lasted about 20 minutes before I slipped the net under her. The use of the mud anchor was a big improvement and I wished I had used it on the 43lbs the night before. The marshal was called and a weight of 38.4lbs was recorded. We should have been happy but we had the feeling that our chance was over. The rest of the night passed without any action and when we awoke we found out that we were still in the lead. But we knew that it would not last and that the other competitors were queuing up to over take us.

Hanging in there…

The third night we had to replace a few of the rods in different places and started the baiting process again. We opted for two rods on the clear ground just before the start of the underwater weed about 150 meters out. We left one rod on the kelp bed in front of us and decided to fish one halfway between that and the under water weed. But we did not have much confidence as we had about ten anglers each side of us and not a lot of fish had been caught.

The luck begins to turn…

The anglers to the right of us had had a few fish the first night and that was it. But the anglers on our left down at the forest had been catching a few and looked good to take the lead and after we had blanked on the third night that was the case. We were now in second place but only barely as another team was just behind us. I think that the fish had moved off us at this stage as early in the morning fish could be seen crashing 600 to 700 meters out and all we could hope for now was that everyone else blanked for the rest of the competition. But there was little hope of that.

The next night was spent sitting around wondering on what might have been, where the fish where and how many would be caught that night. Each morning we awoke to find ourselves a little bit further down the list. But I think at this stage we had accepted our fate and just hoped to hang on and finish in the top ten.

Studying the results…

On the fourth morning after another blank we were in fifth place. But after studying the daily newsletter we got from the organizers we could work out which sections where catching and how often and which teams were likely to over take us. One of the pros about fishing a big lake in competitions like this is that you can build up a picture of how the lake fishes and the movements of the fish.

If you collected the newsletters each day and studied the map and the numbers in each of the 9 sections you can gain more info in five nights than you could possibly accumulate in five years fishing it on your own. Initially the thought of fishing two rods on a 2500 acre lake with 250 other anglers was not very attractive to me but I feel like I have a much better knowledge of Madine now and look forward to fishing it again.

The competition ends…

The fifth night passed away fishless again under a massive storm and we awoke to a dark looking day, which had the look of rain about it. So we set about setting down the gear and to our surprise the metal barge pulled up right in front of us. With a bit of a rushed scramble we got the gear on to the barge and were first off the island, result!

At the harbor there was a team of marshals to help us with our gear to the van. We only got the last bits of the gear into the van and the rains came. This left us with plenty of time to get shaved, showered, fed and watered before the closing ceremony. But this was not the case for some poor unfortunates, who did not get off the island till about 2pm and very wet.

Final Results...

So the closing ceremony was held up for a while before it kicked off. It was then we got the results and that we heard that the English lads Andrew Judd and Peter Truckle had scooped £10000 and first place with 11 fish for 140kgs. Second prize went to another English pair Kevin Hewitt and Mark Bartlett with 5 fish for 89.6kgs. Third went to the Pascal Gallion and Tim Mack with 4 fish for 76.5kgs. We finished up in 8th place 4 fish for 56.75kgs.

The team event was won by Carpworld One and they finished up with 5 fish for 89.6kgs. As this was the tenth anniversary it was good to see that all the records were broken. The record for highest amount of fish caught in the competition was broken and now stands at 94 fish. The biggest fish now stands at 23.7kgs caught by the Luxembourg team that came in third place. 33 teams managed to catch a fish so all in all a great result and a great competition.

Credit Due...

I can’t wait till next year’s event rolls around and I get to fish the great Lac de Madine again and meet up with all the lads we met this year and I’d like to give a big thanks to the all the marshals that helped run the competition, especially Dave and Chris from our section and a massive thank you to Gardner and Heathrow Baits for the top quality tackle and bait that helped to bring us this success. All the items supplied by these companies performed faultlessly and I’m really looking forward to replacing my braid with the new Gardner GR5000 Sediment Braid early next year. I'll let you know how I get on!

Check out Dan's stunning capture and all the highlights of this incredible event on the official World Carp Classic website.