Nant in a comfortable top spot, and Coch

I have been saying for many weeks now that week in, week out it is the top teams that keep winning through to the final rounds of the competitions. It has been the talk of all the competition boys too. Generally speaking, there is a fair sprinkling of “average” teams amongst the finalists; this year though has been exceptional. No one can put his or her finger on exactly why this should be the case.John Horsey and I travelled to “The Brenig” on Thursday evening. We put out the banners and check-in sheets for the following morning and beat a hasty retreat to The Saracens as the midges were out in bloodthirsty mood and in such numbers that they were flitting into and out of my ears!Friday morning dawned windy and overcast. Would the fish feed? Would the anglers cope with the fierce wind? How long would it be before the sun shone through?In answer to these questions I can say that the fish fed sporadically throughout the day, the anglers caught plenty and the sun failed to show. Now to the surprise package of Day one on Brenig! First and third places went to highly favoured teams – Llanilar Ty-Nant in a comfortable top spot, and Coch-y-Bondhu eight fish clear in third spot. But…second place went to the Czech Republic Airflo Team. Talk about surprise! You should have seen the faces of the locals when the Czech team came out with bag after decent bag of fish! But it could have been even better. Vladimir Sedivy brought eight fish to the scales. He caught his eighth fish at 2.15 and thus qualified for a time bonus of seven and a half pounds. He should have been top individual of the day but unfortunately one of his trout was deemed to be under the twelve-inch size limit and was therefore excluded from his bag. Now the Czech team have to decide whether they will make the long trip to the final, as they only entered this event to get some practice for next year’s world championships, which will be held in North Wales. Should they opt out of the two-day final at Rutland in August, then Clywedog Otters will be the lucky team to benefit. My old pal George Barron from Llanilar was the biggest beneficiary of Vladimar’s undersized trout, as he became the winner of the Nomad Tropical shirt for the top bag of fish. Incidentally he also had the joint best fish along with John Jones from the North Wales Police Team.Day Two managed to provide even more shock results. Several fancied teams were fishing. Team Yamaha are always favourites, and Llanilar had their “B” team fishing along with Ty-Nant Adail (ex-Llanilar lads) and Aberaeron. Yet at the weigh-in none of the afore mentioned teams figured in the top two qualifiers for the final.In first place were Bois Sir Benfro with 21 trout and top individual Simon Dorris – the only angler to catch a limit on a pretty tough fishing day. The sun shone all day and rod average dropped to below 3 per man.Second spot went to Cheshire Hawks FFC Blues. Their four-man team brought 19 trout to the scales. Largest trout was a superb looking Tiger trout weighing exactly 5 pounds, caught by Matthew Duncalf of Prince Albert AS.We now have just two qualifying rounds to go – one at Grafham and one at Hanningfield. This weekend sees a break in the programme, so I will be catching up with some e-mails, results from the other comps and … some trout fishing!Tight lines,

Martin Cottis