Northern Carp Cup Winners! 3rd November, 2012

Mainline backed carper Wayne Mansford has recently been in touch with Mainline HQ with the great news that he and carp match partner Rob Greening had won the final of the Northern Carp Cup! Over to Wayne for his report:

"After landing myself into all 4 British carp match finals (BCAC, UK Carp Cup, Midlands & Northern Carp cup) last weekend was my final match of the year and it was time to join up with Rob Greening and do some damage. The host venue for the final was 'Sunny 2' on the Wyreside complex in Lancaster. We'd done a lot of research prior to the match, and soon learned that the fishing had been very slow with very few fish coming out. The weather forecast ahead of us was frosts and strong northerly winds, and it was evident it was going to be a hard and a tough match. Once the draw had taken place and we were allocated our swim, we decided to sit on our hands and keep disturbance to a minimum. The swims and pegging was very tight, and we were placed on a long stretch of bank with lots of other anglers and lines crammed in either side of us. The moment the hooter went, most of the pairs along our bank began to thrash the water to a foam with spods, markers and bait. We made minimal disturbance as possible, and simply made a couple of casts to give us an idea of the topography of the lake bed and we slackened our lines right down and let all of the other anglers push the fish into our water.

Tactic wise we chose to go for the 'Instant approach', and we started off by using highly glugged 10ml Fruitella pop ups, little bags and sticks and crushed 10ml Cell boilies. We chopped and changed with different colour hook baits, zigs and bag mixes throughout the match, and found the winning combo to be short zigs and 10ml Fruitella pop ups.
The match was a grueller and we got battered by frost, heavy wind and torrential rain, but in total we managed to bag a total weight of 77lb, with second place at a mere 15lb and 3rd place fishing up on 14lb."