by David Ewing

This has been the closest World Championship's we've had for years. It hasn't been a great spectacle for the thousands of people who turned up to watch, but it has been a tactical battle par excellence. The day one results left the match wide open. The first round was particularly high scoring for a world champs. This was partly because England and France had fished defensively and avoided any blanks or disasters but finished with most of their angler's coming just in or out of the top ten (with the exception of Diego da Silva, of course). The Italians were more positive on day one and would have dominated the day had Falsini not come in with 20 points from A section.

The position on Saturday night was: Italy and Yugoslavia tying with 41.5 points each, France on 45 and England on 49. Clearly the team who would win on Sunday was the team which would reacted best to how the venue had fished during the first leg.

Day 1 results by section of eventual top three teams.

It is worth explaining that no section fished the same. Remember these sections were far apart - A section was well over a mile along the river from E. This meant that there were in fact 5 separate matches in terms of tactics. For me, there was one point where England won the world champs and that was in their hotel on Saturday night when they had their team meeting. They shared information and ideas on how each section had fished that day and came out of that meeting with a better idea of how to fish these separate sections on Sunday than any other team. This ability to analyse what had happened and to communicate with each other is the real hidden strength of the England squad and I will come back to this point later.

First lets take a look at what actually happened on Sunday.

We precede each section with the result of each of the top three team's anglers' in that section.

This section turned out to be the hardest of all. There was the odd big fish caught in the section, indeed Ballabeni caught a late 2.7kg slab to snatch the section and eventual individual gold medal. Bob Nudd and Jean Pierre Fougeat both fished safe for solid section points.
Below: Ballabeni in action on day 1 in Section A were he'd just lost a good fish on the 2 hour mark but still put in a great performance for 3pts.

Here there were more better fish to be taken. England used the same groundbait mix in all the sections - 2 parts river soil (1 part French river, 1 part English river) and two parts Gros Gardon (for more information on river soils visit the article on it in Déclic Pêche on this site. What differed on this section is that Steve knew from the practice sessions that there were eels here so he put chopped worm in from the off to maximise his chances of snaring some 'snakes' and also used worm sections in order to let the juices 'flow out'. He opted for 0.19 hooklengths, as they'd found on practise that the eels could run up a little on the large size! He ended up with three eels and some small fish and was leading the section for sometime, according to all commentators, until he was pipped near the end by a Spaniard, Romera Perez, three pegs away, second place however was still a brilliant result for him and the team.

Again there were more quality fish available in this section so chopped worm, along with joker and caster, went in straight away. Will drew this section and made no mistake with a bream, eels and some bits, using a similar approach as Steve, regarding hooklengths. Now you may think a 0.19 hooklength is a bit of overkill but William actually broke off on three 'big snakes' prior to landing his first. He eventually slaughtered this section with a clear 3.5 kilos over second placed angler, Luis Pires of Portugal. Indeed Will's final weight of 5.100kg was the highest weight on day 2 and the second highest of the championship - beaten only by Diego da Silva on day 1.

Here chopped worm played no part in the team plan. This was an out and out bleak section with the slim chance of the odd roach on the bottom. Giles Caudin caught a trout early and then started to catch bleak and small roach steadily. Alan spent sometime looking for roach but when he moved to bleak he started to climb up the section, eventually finishing 6th. My favourite Italian, Sorti, who had come second from an extremely difficult swim on day 1, occupied 3rd on day 2.

Home support was under-standably strong, as demonstrated here on the bridge overlooking Giles Caudin. The banner reads "ALLEZ GILLES! ALLEZ FRANCE"

This was the most tense of all the sections on Sunday. Three of the previous day's section winners had drawn here along with a couple of second placed anglers. Diego da Silva, the favourite, was drawn here on 14 and the French crowd were willing him to win the individual crown all day long. However as we stated in our Saturday night report, Diego would not find any bream in this section, as none had shown the previous day.
Along with Diego we had Ian Leach, who'd drawn and won this section the previous day off peg 1 with 2.200kg, which mainly consisted of a 'dog' chub. He drew only 5 pegs away from that peg. Marc Green, winner of A section on day 1, drew at the better end of the section on 27. Add to this Szillard Magyar of Hungry on 2 points and Trabucco on 4 points, you had the makings of a cracking section!
Chopped worm played no part in the team plan here for England (Diego slipped some in just in case of a miracle!). Roach had shown early on Saturday but bleak were the dominant fish. Diego and the other contenders started looking for the roach, running through with 3 to 5 gram floats. Quickly it became obvious that what roach had shown the day before were now AWOL - bleak were going to be the key! Diego did brilliantly from the poorest end of the section, peg 14, two pegs away from where Stuart Conroy had caught 390 grams on Saturday. Diego weighed in 600gr of bleak, about 33 fish and the French crowd cheered every one! Indeed he was winning the section and on his way to taking Gold, that was until the scales reached pegs 32, 33 and 34!
Stu Conroy, on 32, had caught over 50 bleak for 1.040kg (see Stu's story coming later on matchangler.com) Antonio Marques, from Portugal was second with 970 grams and Mikael Tono third from 33 with 940 grams. This last weight pushed Diego to fourth in the section and 5 penalty points which (sadly) meant individual bronze - not GOLD. I say sadly because I believe he was the best angler of the championships. He'd dominated day 1, doing what he does best, catching bream. Yet on day 2 he slaughtered the 15 anglers either side of him - on BLEAK! However you look at it, I think that had he been in B, C or even A section he would have been individual champion - WHAT AN ANGLER!!!
The other individual contenders did less well. Marc Green felt the loneliness of fishing at this level as he weighed in only one bleak for 10 grams and 34 points. Ian Leach found chub absent from the top of the section and weighed in just 160 grams for 18th place. Szillard suffered the same fate on peg 3.

Gold medal winner Unberto Ballabeni is flanked by silver medallist Piotr Lorenc (right) and bronze medallist Diego da Silva (left).

So what were the differences between the top teams?
I believe England had a flexible team plan which gave its anglers in the best sections (B and C) a full three hours to try and catch better fish by feeding chopped worm from the start. Sure they needed a bleak to beat the blank but it proved the right way to go. The French fished defensively and did best in the two sections where big fish were absent - D and E. Unfortunately the anglers in B and C section were not aggressive enough in their feeding and these are the sections where they lost the match. Didier Guessard said after the match on Sunday that the French team had no idea that there were eels to be caught. It is fair to say that the French did not draw particularly well in these sections but Will's peg was not brilliant either - the angler the previous day had BLANKED on it! Will caught his fish because he focused and fed for them.

The Italians went the other way, they were aggressive, but Roberto Trabucco, for example, fished most of Sunday on the bottom looking for the roach caught the day before. He switched to bleak fishing far too late and this cost him dear. Simone Carraro, who'd replaced Falsini, also bombed out in C section, getting a mere 20 points. Yet the rest of the team made this aggressive approach work (inparticular Sorti who fished superbly on both days).

Overall I think it was England's ability on Saturday night to work out exactly which sections should be fished in which way that made the difference. They read each section perfectly in terms of ground baiting and when to target which fish. They came up with, not one team plan, but five detailed section plans, which all worked perfectly. There was however one specific item which ultimately ensured England's success and this was their ability to keep secret the knowledge of EELS in certain sections which wasn't brought into play until the final day!

This World Champs was not a great spectacle of fishing, but it was a competition for the thinking angler and a produced a true tactical battle. You will hear people say that Paris was like Belleek or Holme Pierrepoint - that is not the case, those matches were decided on blanks and while this championship had its fair share of blanks, these were confined to the low profile squads. Paris was decided on FISH, not always big ones, but specific fish at specific times Also getting the feeding pattern sorted correctly for each species proved crucial factors in deciding the outcome in Paris.

Well done England, they showed us who had the best and smartest angling brains over the two days to take Gold.

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