Drennan North West canal ace, Simon Mottram, reports back from an inaugural Canal Pairs Championship where he and his pairs partner were in winning form.

This year a new competition called the Angling Trust and Canal & River Trust Canal Pairs Championship was launched. It was held on the Shropshire Union Canal at Soudley and was fished by a tremendous 68 pairs. Both myself and good friend, pairs partner Simon Preece have fished the ‘Shroppy’ for a long time, so we naturally jumped at the chance of booking on.

The day started off with Simon doing the draw. This put him on a section which, for those who know it, was three pegs to the left of the famous oak tree peg. Meanwhile, I was on B Section, which was in the middle of the Palethorpes section. First of all I didn’t think we’d drawn that well but when we stopped and thought about it we realised we perhaps had a glimmer of a chance…

I decided on just getting my head down on squatt fish with an odd look for a bonus. My peg was about 13m wide and only shallow so my main line was at 11.5m in the slightly deeper water, which I fed with groundbait, using my Acolyte Carp pole.

Incidentally, I use this pole for everything, as pushing your pole through hedges etc and shipping in and out can take its toll, but I’ve used this for two months and it’s been ace. It’s a lot more than a ‘carp pole’ it’s a total all-rounder!

I also plumbed a heavy rig for down the middle with strong gear; size 12 B560 hook and 0.16mm Supplex hooklength. I also set up a ‘riot rig’ for down the peg at 14.5m with 0.18mm Supplex, size 16 Super Spade hook and a Crystal Dibber for an odd chub, which can show anywhere on this venue.

I started off fishing at 11.5m over my groundbait with a skimmer rig and double maggot, but with only an odd small fish showing I soon changed to a small-fish squatt rig and proceeded to catch tiny fish every chuck. There wasn’t a lot going on around me so I just plodded on catching.

I had the odd look on my chub rig but no bites. After about two hours some bream had come out five and six pegs away but I just tried to remember that it was a 68-peg section and carried on.

In the 4th hour my fish got slightly bigger with more dumpy roach showing. I picked up my lighter rig to fish off the bottom and caught quite a few of these and also put another pole section on and had some on my overspray rig.

With 20 minutes to go I thought I could have 10 minutes to look for a bonus fish, which I felt would give me really good points if I could manages one. So, I potted some chopped lobworms and some casters in both my track swim and chub line. I thought a chub would be more likely so picked up this rig first. This is when I had a stroke of luck, as when I shipped the rig out I very skilfully managed to tangle the ultra-short rig in a bit of a mess! So, I chucked this up the bank, picked up my deeper track rig, dropped it in and it buried straight away with a perch of a pound! I was glad I had tangled the other rig now! Call it what you like – jammy or good luck – but I didn’t care.

After a bit of stick from the next peg I had another look for one but no more bites. I therefore finished off the remaining minutes catching a few more squatt fish.

I wasn’t sure what I had caught, so was surprised when my 200 small fish and the ‘skilfully planned’ perch weighed 3.23kg. I felt this would definitely be worth good points, so it was now down to Simon…

On arriving back I found out I had got 60 points out of a possible 68, so was very happy with that. Simon returned and looked pleased, too, as he’d done superbly well catching some bonus perch and hybrids on worm and caster to weigh 3kg and 4th in his 68 pegs. It was a class performance for what can be a funny peg, but he knew what to do so game on.

Lots of people were saying we had won but we weren’t sure. After what seemed an age we were announced champions with a 125-point score! We picked up the £1,000 prize together with a bit of mini section money – that lasted about a minute after getting the drinks in!

It was a great match and, as we were told, nobody will ever win the first one again.

The Future’s Bright

I must add that further up the road the organisers ran a free-to-enter junior match for 12-16 year olds. They had their presentation at the same venue and all had some superb prizes that had been donated. All came up to collect them with lots of clapping, which everybody agreed was great to see.

Thanks

I’d like to thank Becca Dent and John Ellis from the Canal & Rivers Trust and the Angling Trust for getting the competition off the ground. Also, Terry Nutt from Hodnet AC, who did a great job of pegging, organising the weighing in and also making sure everybody knew where they were going.

Roll on next year as I can see it being even bigger. I’ve heard rumours of qualifying rounds and a big final, which would be great as the canal circuit is thriving!