I sit down to write this piece still in shock that we won this competition. To say the nerves were jangling is an understatement!

With less than two hours of the match remaining William Raison and I were trailing the front runners Scotland, a pair made up of Jamie Masson and David Corcoran, by over twenty kilos and were lying back in fifth place looking dead and buried. Even a seasoned campaigner like me was feeling the pressure as favourites to win, it was looking decidedly dodgy. Fishing in front of the cameras is whole new ball game when everything is going wrong and you can be scrutinised down to the finest detail. For the pairs from Ireland, France, Holland, Hungary and Germany this was also a totally new experience.

With no practice allowed, we had to make a stab at the tactics and relied on the fact that we had won this event twice as a four man England team, when fishing short at 6meters with casters and small amounts of chopped worms and Groundbait delivered in a cad pot did the damage in the past. We were then just going to lose feed casters at thirteen meters to catch Carp and a groundbait line (Sensas Crazy bait Gold and Crazy bait shrimp and fishmeal) in two feet of water off to the side with dead maggots in the hope of catching some big boys in the dying stages of the match.

In line with tradition the draw was done the day before during the Fish O Mania individual event and we had one peg that was half decent in peg 11 and one that was potentially a difficult peg 3 where the competitors had really struggled on the Fish O match on Saturday. On this match it is possible to place your anglers so I took the difficult peg leaving William on what we hoped would be the better area as his bagging skills are second to none if things were going wrong.

I must admit I did not sleep so well the night before the match as I knew I had got a challenge on just to catch anything if the wind was in the same direction as the day before. I said a little prayer as I walked onto the bank but my heart sank as it was exactly in the same direction but just a little stronger. The problem was that my peg was almost flat for 90% of the match and with bright sunshine the carp would not come into my peg in any numbers so when our inside line failed to produce no matter what I tried I couldn’t catch anything long shallow. A desperate look on waggler also just produced an odd Skimmer so unless the inside line over the groundbait kicked in, there was no way back.

With one and a half hours remaining, all I had mustered was just three small carp and a few skimmers; William was just about keeping us in it with some good size fish shallow at thirteen meters. My neighbours Lee Edwards for Wales on peg 4 and Jamie on 5 were doing really well catching shallow, so both myself and William came in short over our GB and dead maggot line to hopefully make up some ground. Using 0.2g new Drennan AS2 pole float to 0.20 main line and 0.18mm Hook length and a size 14 Drennan Margin Carp hook baited with 5 dead maggots, I took a run of fish and Will had started to catch. So suddenly we put nearly eighteen kilos on the scales in just half an hour to close the gap on the leaders!

Using a pink Drennan Bungee through the top kit of my Acolyte pole landing fish quickly was not a problem and I knew William would also be on stepped up gear; we were closing in on the leaders. All the other teams followed suit, coming in close but all struggled as they had elected to fish tight to the bank side in shallower water. Our inside line was about a meter out in deeper water and this was a great decision. By feeding loose groundbait and a helping of dead maggots in a 250mil Polemaster pot after each fish, we were now flying.

At the final whistle we had turned a 20kilo deficit into a 11kilo winning margin with William doing what he does best fishing a faultless match to entertain a fantastic crowd and win the day with a brilliant display of fishing, landing his last fish a five kilo carp in just 27 seconds as the whistle was about to blow.

Mick Brais from Sky TV said it was the best fishing program he had ever been involved in and I’m sure anyone who was there will agree, you could cut the tension with a knife going into the final stages of the match. Who says fishing cannot be made interesting for TV, anyone who can get a copy to watch I urge you to check this one out!