World Carp Masters 2018 Czech Republic – 3

Part 3: The South Africans Draw Pegs And Start The Tournament Day 5 had arrived! Registration day! The big day, the team gathered to make a true South African style entrance. Registrations had officially begun! Registration: Done. Lifejacket check: Done. IMAGES: Eugene Kruger MBD Media, Hannes van der Merwe, SA team Media, Marshal Mike Parks, Media team - WCM We were now registered! 73rd in the sequence draw, last of all the Team SA members. Received our competitor badges and welcoming packages filled with goodies and the official WCM magazine! We also decided to order meals during the tournament from a local restaurant. Two meals a day per person, lunch and dinner. The best choice we made to focus on angling and not worry about cooking. The meals were delivered to our pegs promptly every day. After registrations, we returned to the bungalows to continue feed prep and cooking and discussed the final trip into town for the last necessities for the WCM tournament week. Peg 61, our swim for WCM. Sadly, three of my rods were damaged on the plane, so we were down one rod for the tournament. We had to improvise: buy the first best rods we could find to compete in the tournament, or invest in proper rods and hope they survive the trip back to SA? It was a difficult decision. We did not have a lot of time left to drive into town, as the WCM Events had begun and it was now game time. Instead of driving 100km to Pilsen, we took a chance and drove 15km to a small town instead where we found two spinning rods in a very small fishing store. For the duration of the tournament, it would be perfect. Our stress levels dropped a bit and we could continue to strategize, build rigs, cook the feed and pre-soak boilies. Molli's new 8ft spinning/carp rods for the tournament. Day 6 in Czech. Event day, filled with action, sponsor and tackle expo, casting competition, boilie stick throwing competition, boat demos and the champagne dinner. As only the South Africans can, the team dressed up in funny attire to make a grand entrance. Boy oh boy, did we make an entrance! Singing and marching, we caught the attention of all the competitors at event city. All cameras were focused on the green and gold wave approaching. The day was spent meeting all the fellow competitors from around the world! Exciting stories were told, friends were made, and all the competitors sat down together to enjoy a meal fit for kings. The meet and greet continued throughout the evening and all the competitors, organizers and marshals had a great time. Then came day 7! Peg draw day! Game on! A notable change in the competitors’ behaviour, serious and ready for the tournament! Wearing our SA shirts, the SA team was once again visible. The Strongest Carp Angler competition began, the expo continued and then the big moment we had all been waiting for, peg draws! The flag parade signalled the beginning of the ceremony and every competitor stood proud, with mutual respect for each other. Organiser Steve Bond welcomed all the competitors, arrangements and announcements were made and then the peg draw began! Funny dress event Funny dress event Funny dress event It was a long wait to be called number 73 to do the peg draw; Hannes took the lead and drew a number - Peg 61, in the Gillhams section! Team SA now had 4 teams in the Sonik Section, 3 teams in Gillhams Section and 1 team in the LCA Section. When the peg draw was completed, all the teams started on their final preparations and packing. Once everything was packed, it was time to sleep. Get a good night’s rest to leave bright and early for the peg. DAY 1 OF WCM It was here! It was happening! All the months of planning and strategizing came down to these 5 days of angling. We arrived at 07:00 sharp at our peg, in the small town of Olešná. It was a misty morning, not much could be seen of the swim, but what we could see was beautiful! We unloaded our gear and started to set up camp, when the mist cleared, we could have a proper look at our swim. There was an enormous high wall in front of the swim. A mountain – an optical illusion. Very carpy! Excitement started to grow, and we continued to set up the camp. The official start of the tournament was only at 16:00, so we had a whole day to set up the entire camp. We made sure everything was as close to 100% as it could be. At 2pm we were ready, waiting for the signal to start. By 3pm we got word from the marshals that the tournament would only start at 5pm due to delays with the boat swims. We continued to strategize and decided on a game plan. First, we would go out on the boat to do some feature finding with the fishfinder. Then make a call from there on what baiting methods would be used. We had 4 teams to our left and 10 teams to our right. We might need to feed a lot to get the fish in our swim. Luckily, we were stocked to the brim with particles, pellets and boilies. The marshal of our section, Mike Parks, came to each swim to check the boat and safety equipment, and to indicate the border posts between each swim. More than enough space for each team, so the chances of neighbours poaching were very slim. View from below peg 61. Finally, the start of the World Carp Masters 2019 tournament had begun! We got into the boat to start feature finding. It looked like a short distance to the opposite bank, with a lovely big rock that could be used as a marker for direction, but as we drove further in, we realised that it is an optical illusion. About 300m wide, with a nice cove that had been made by the river. The depth gradually became deeper up to 10m, then a sharp, immediate, rocky climb on the opposite bank. The only feature we could find on the sonar was a tree stump 2m below the big round rock. Nothing else. No grass, no pits, no nothing. Absolutely nothing. After a while of feature finding, we returned to the bank to start taking in the lines. Hannes “dépped” the right-hand swim, I graciously accepted the left-hand swim simply because my marker would be that lovely big round rock with a tree stump to target. No need to place markers in the water. The water was twirling with fish, what species we did not know. First choice for a hooklink was a long supple braid hair rig with a popup. Having all these new hookbaits to choose from we started with foreign baits - popups on a bed of particles and boilies. Hannes combined the popups with boilies and pellet hookbaits on PVA bags filled with crushed boilies and pellets. Work station, no time to waste, use a box as a table. Not long after the rods were in, the sunset and the day was over. We decided to leave the rods for the night to see what the bite ratio would be, to better determine how regularly we would need to rebait the rods. News came from another SA team, first fish on the bank! Well done SA! Ruan, JC and Francois landed the first weigh fish of the tournament. Excited for them we had a quick sandwich and it was off to bed for us. DAY 2 OF WCM Nothing happened. A few long-lost bleeps of the alarms that could be line bites, but nothing worth getting excited about. We heard from our neighbours that there had been a few fish that came out during the night in our section, including a beautiful 8kg 4 pegs to our left for the Czech team. So that gave us the indication that, at least every 6hours, we could redo rods and feed a little more. Getting a bite indication was troublesome. We dropped the bait right up the opposite bank which is a cliff. This meant we would not receive an actual run, but only back bites. The decision was then made to strike every major line back drop and rather redo the rod, other than to lose a catch. This meant redoing the rods constantly. Countless times we lost fish, what species we did not know. We experimented with small back leads, large back leads, in line back leads with none really making a difference in bite indication. All we knew was that there was activity in our swim. I decided to go back to my favourite and trusted ScareCrow bait. Using South African brands, we brought with us, a pineapple flavoured tigernut with a halved popup upside down. Next: Day 3 and beyond