Michael Heritage reports back

I had hoped to be titling this article ‘How I made the National Team’ or ‘How (any of us Southerners) made the National Team’. Well I suppose I have already given the results away, but if you are interested to find out how we all blew it read on.

For the National the river is divided into four long sections, or beats. Competitors are divided into four groups and fish two 90-minute sessions on their designated beats, either in the morning or the afternoon.

This means that each beat has eight anglers fishing it at one time. The scoring system is on place points, so you are trying to beat the other anglers in your group and get 1 point.

This means getting the most fish points with any trout, grayling or sea trout over 20cms counting, but if you blank in a session you automatically get 8 place points.

If you have accumulated the least number of points, after your four sessions over two days, you are the National Champion. To make the team you must be in the first 6 out of 32.

Running through the blue gray mountains and lush green valleys of Builth Wells, the Dee is a beautiful rocky river with rapids, riffles and glides, home to grayling, trout, sea trout and salmon.

The wading is mostly very hard and hazardous, especially on pools with slippery slanting slabs of bedrock. There is so much water to learn about and, even though we had fished last year’s National on the same venue, our knowledge of this river is limited.

I had made two trips down with Tony Fox and Andrew Smith, and with Baz Reece, two weeks before the match. We had found the fishing a little harder, catching less fish than last year.

We fished with bugs and dries and caught some fabulous grayling to well over 40cms and some fairly substantial wild brownies. These tended to be in tight pods from which you were lucky to catch more than a couple.

Some places were productive and other really good looking sections of water seemed fishless. The fish were generally quite reluctant to rise with any regularity but could occasionally be tempted up to large dries.

The fish that I caught, especially the grayling, were always in the same places, and on the lower beats there was a real shortage of sizeable trout.

The river was in excellent order, with the slightest tint of colour and pushing through at a good height that was dropping slowly. The weather was mild, with sunny and cloudy spells and mostly light to non-existent winds.

This year there was no practice fishing allowed a week before the competition, so the scene looked very promising with good hatches of stonefly, and the odd midge, olive and sedge on the water.

Nobody was really prepared for how difficult it was going to turn out. After the first day Tony Fox was lying in 3rd place (4 place points),

Baz Reece 7th (7 place points) and I was 9th

(9 place points). We were all very much in sight, even Andrew Smith well down the field could,

on 14 place points, turn it around on the second day.

It turned out to be a blank-saving operation with one fish making a huge difference. You could afford to carry one blank so the pressure was on us all to catch in both or even just one of the last two sessions. Did we do it? Well, you already know the answer, and all three of us ended just a fish away.

It was heart-breaking stuff for all of us. It was like that for many, with some sessions on certain beats having six out of eight anglers blanking, the record being session 4 on Tony and Baz’s beat, which saw only one fish caught, and that was by the only woman in the competition, Sheena Goode.

I ended up catching the third most fish with 10. The 1st and 2nd placed anglers had 11, again just one tiny fish away. If only I had spread them out a bit, oh well.

Despite the hardness of the fishing in this year’s competition, you learn so much and the atmosphere of the craic is wonderful.

You are rubbing shoulders with some of the best river fishers in the country and if you are lucky might even get to see them in action. Masters of the dry fly, French nymphing, stream fishing techniques, and even the bung.

Bill Rankin (inventor of the bung) was paired with the legendary John Tyzack and was treated to a sublime display of river craft and dry fly fishing.

If you can come along to the South East qualifier on the River Itchen and experience this type of competition for yourself you will see there is nothing like it.

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Andrew Smith

Mike Heritage

Tony Fox

Bill Rankin

Off to tackle a frosty Lower Itchen