Italy win the gold, Hungary silver and England bounce back in style to take the bronze medal. Scotthorne wins individual bronze and narrowly misses out on a sixth gold accolade!
Drennan Team England have put in a blistering performance to win Day Two of the World Championship and earn themselves a very hard-earned team bronze medal. They had double cause to celebrate as five times World Champion Alan Scotthorne once again showed his awesome class to win individual bronze – and came oh so close to an unprecedented sixth gold crown!
The 62nd World Championship was fished on the River Sava that cuts through the stunning forest-lined mountains of Slovenia. The venue is arguably one of the most picturesque ever chosen and the fishing also did not disappoint with huge shoals of vimba and bleak in every peg, plus roach, bonus barbel, carp, carassio, bream and chub.
This was possibly the most diverse venue ever chosen as depths ranged from 3m to 9m on the maximum pole length of 13 metres and the opposite ends of the match length required completely different skill sets. Whips fished shallow and at full depth, short poles, long poles, the bolo, the sliding bolo and sliding wagglers were all utilised. The bottom was notoriously snaggy in many areas with the middle of B Section resembling a waggler graveyard with lost rigs!
As always, feeding played a huge part and while England admit they got it slightly wrong the first day, they made some crucial changes to dominate Day Two.
Nearly Six For Scotthorne!
On the first day Alan Scotthorne drew Peg A1 and made no mistakes to win his 19-peg zone with 9kg, which included plenty of bleak and small vimba plus a bonus bream. The next day he drew Peg 19 in the fancied D Section and set his stall out for better vimba and barbel. Three good vimba gave him a great start before disaster struck and a large snag saw him lose his entire pole rig which awkwardly remained in his swim for the rest of the match. Soon after he then lost a large carp and came back with someone else’s flat float rig tethered to his hook!
Thankfully, fortune finally shone on the Drennan ace as he hooked another huge carp and after an intense battle that saw him stood on his seatbox he netted the beast estimated at well over 4kg!
His big-fish-taming gear was an 8g prototype Drennan float on 0.23mm Supplex to a 0.15mm Supplex Fluorocarbon hooklength with two maggots and four bloodworm on a size 10 Kamasan B511 hook. Strong pink 14-16 Carp Bungee elastic was used through his Acolyte Carp pole.
A few barbel and vimba followed but bankrunners were not sure that it would be enough to take the section. Italy were earliest to weigh and Francesco Reverberi set the pace with over 12kg before Slovenia’s Dejan Petakovic placed a quality 13.96kg on the scales. Alan was the last man in his half-zone to weigh and a huge roar followed after he recorded a section-winning 15.194kg.
Alan scored a maximum two points but this was matched by two others with superior weights; former champion Tamas Walter from Hungary and the newly crowned champion Yuri Siptsov from Russia. Yuri won Day Two outright with a fine weight of quality barbel for 19kg to go with an almost equally impressive 17kg weight the day before.
Will Raison also narrowly missed out on the medal positions with two section 2nds that earned him 4th overall.
A Solid Team Performance
Of course, the team effort is always the most vital part of this two-day event. Italy completely dominated Day 1 with a 12-point tally, ahead of a chasing pack on 19 points and England way behind with 33 points for 9th. As always, England learnt quickly and reacted well, pulling out all of the stops to win the second day outright with 13.5 points! No one was more pleased or surprised than the two managers Mark Addy and Mark Downes when they discovered it was enough for a bronze medal.
On Day Two, Steve Hemingray came in for Callum Dicks and did well to come 3rd in A Section behind last year’s World Champion Goran Radovic of Serbia and France’s Diego Da Silva who caught two big bonus bream. Sean Ashby put on a world class speed fishing display to earn 2 points in B Section. Will Raison caught a fine 14kg net of quality fish including several decent barbel to take 2nd in C Section but was beaten into 2nd place by Ilya Yakushin of Russia’s 17.9kg. Alan won D Section and Des Shipp whipped out a good 6.046kg net of mostly bleak and was very unlucky not to come back with more than 5.5 points in his relatively tough half of E Section as he only needed another 700g to win it.
Silver And Gold
England’s double bronze was bettered by Hungary’s team and individual silver as they put all of their experience on the venue to good use to end up with 40.5 points.
Ahead of everyone, however, were the ever-consistent Italians. The highly experienced squad won Day 1 with 12 points and didn’t take any gambles as they put in a safe and steady Day 2 performance to hold onto a well-deserved title.
Super Slovenia!
It was a fantastic angling spectacle on a beautiful venue with great weather. Yes, it was peggy, snaggy, varied wildly and was far from the ‘even’ depths and contours normally stipulated for a World Championship event – but no one seemed to complain as the fishing was so prolific and the fish so plentiful. In fact, many nations seemed keen to soon return to the River Sava for another go!
Day One Teams
- 1st Italy 12pts
- 2nd Czech Republic 19pts
- 3rd Spain 19pts
Day Two Teams
- 1st England 13.5pts
- 2nd France 17pts
- 3rd Hungary 21pts
Teams Overall
- 1st Italy 37pts
- 2nd Hungary 40.5pts
- 3rd England 46.5pts
Individuals
- 1st Yuri Siptsov (Russia) 2pts (36.939kg)
- 2nd Tamas Walter (Hungary) 2pts (27.447kg)
- 3rd Alan Scotthorne (England) 2pts (24.343kg)
- 4th Will Raison (England) 4pts (26.390kg)