Part One of our picture gallery follows Drennan Team England on the final day of practice for the World Championship in Croatia.
The venue was the wild and fast-paced Dubrava Canal or ‘Track’ near Prelog, north Croatia. This is a man-made channel that serves an adjacent hydro-electric power station. The flow can be controlled by the power plant but after several weeks of rain the venue was still rising and flowing extremely hard… and continued to do so!
Bait Preparation
The following gallery shows you the importance of gravel for adding weight to both the groundbait and stickymag feed. This was vital to bomb the feed down to the bottom within the confines of the relatively short swims. Finer gravel was added to the coarser stuff to fill in the gaps. Stickymag powder was then added to glue it all together. Rubber gloves were a definite must-have accessory! Some teams even resorted to standing in the buckets with wellington boots on and stomping on the stickymag feed to make it even more compact! The result was an almost solid block of feed from which you could tear off smaller amounts for throwing in.
Floats & Tackle
The anglers were using huge lollipop flat floats averaging 40 to 50 grams in size to help slow a hook bait down in the current. To balance the floats and cope with the 6m depth, strong pink Carp Bungee elastic and Cralusso Ray floats were a popular choice. These were matched to strong and abrasive Fluorocarbon line and hooklengths from 0.18mm for the nase, up to 0.23mm for the barbel. Size 10 hooks seemed the best choice for presenting large bunches of bloodworm and/or maggots with patterns like the Kamasan B511 and B711 being popular. A Drennan Swivel Stop Bead was also essential for attaching hooklengths to and cutting down on line spin.
Nase & Vimba
A silver species called nase were the main target during two weeks of practice, with barbel playing more of a part later on in a session or in the higher sections D and E nearest the hydro-electric station. There were also some large vimba to be caught, which English internationals often fondly refer to as ‘knob heads’ because of their hard noses!
Danube Roach
Des Shipp was lucky enough to catch this 1.9kg (4lb) Danube roach, which put up a hell of a scrap in the powerful current. It is similar in appearance to a British roach but has more of a pointed nose.
Hung Out To Dry
We thought the drying of these towels after several days of relentless rain was slightly optimistic of Sean Ashby!
Shrews Company
Des ‘Dr Dolittle’ Shipp also had a family of several plump rodents happily scurrying around his peg before the start of the Friday session! Perhaps he had some of the Dutch team’s secret cheese additive hidden away?
Mussel Trouble
The bottom was covered in razor-sharp zebra mussels. Almost every angler fishing hooked a clump of them over the two days. They clung to rocks and pebbles and caused havoc with rigs, damaging and cutting through the thickest of lines.
Bolo & Bites
Few anglers managed to make the rod and line work effectively as the flow was so fast and the pegging was quite tight. However, there were some anglers that caught using long bolognese rods, including this masked individual. He was almost certainly trying to avoid the hordes of mosquitoes that were a big problem over the weekend!
Practice Day Catches
Videos