 More astounding news from Celtic Lakes. The match held over the weekend of 18th-20th May has produced some incredible weights.
Complex owner, John Carney, phoned Wales Carp Masters to say: “What a weekend! We are all totally knackered, was that some serious fishing or what!”
In first place were Philip Mathews and Terry Hughes with an incredible 511lb 14oz, but story of the weekend was that they had to stage a late fight back, from over 80lb behind, to upstage Simon O’Brian and Mike Netherway who were in front for much of the match. Simon and Mike concluded with a total of 473lb as their catch rate fell away dramatically overnight on the run in.
3rd place went to Jason Salter & Barry Capel Jarvis with 229lb 4oz, and 4th were Jason Callaghan & Steve Blow with 139lb 4oz.
With a total weight for all competitors of 1,606lb 13 oz, we believe that it sets yet another new record!
In setting this new 40 hour match record the jubilant winners, Philip Mathews and Terry Hughes were understandably cock-a-hoop with their achievement in reaching the September final.
The pair had this to say:
"What a weekend that was! Celtic lakes is a fantastic venue, with hard fighting fish in excellent condition. I had never been there before that weekend as it’s about 70 mile from where we live in the Neath area. It took us one and a half hours to get there and when we turned up a few of the lads were there waiting.
The weather was bad, hard rain was lashing down and we knew there was a walk to the lake but one of the lads said the owner, John Carney, would drop us off with our gear with a quad bike and trailer."
"We were desperate to see the lake but we knew we were very early, so we got our jackets on and walked up to the lake for a look.
It’s a quite a big lake about 17 acres. You could see that the surrounding banks were very clean and tidy and the water was clear, the owner (John) must have spent a lot of time here to make the lake this good. When we were half way round the weather was so bad we turned around but already we could see where we wanted to be, and that was peg 1.
The wind was blowing hard into it and who ever got that peg would get a big advantage."
"The pegs behind the wind 5 and 6 were not looking so good and we wanted to avoid these at all costs. Time passed quite quickly and soon it was time for the drawing of the pegs.
The lucky lads were Simon and Mike with peg 1 - Someone told me that Simon had entered 3 times before in attempting to get to the final, so he must of fancied their chances this time from the best peg on the lake.
Jason Salter & Barry Capel Jarvis were in peg 6 and that didn’t look too great but then it was time for us to find out what peg we had."
" We were gutted - we drew peg 5.
At 3:30 we were all set up and we were asked to go to John’s house for the reading of the rules and John and his wife Tracey had put on hot rolls and hot drinks for all.
At 6pm the match started, and the boys opposite had a fish 3 minutes in. By 6:20 we were up and running and fished steadily though the night, the fish were hard fighting and when you got one on the bank you could see they were well looked after. At about 4 o'clock on the Saturday everything started to become clear where we were in the race to win a place in the final."
"One of the marshals with us had a call from peg 1 to say that the welsh record had just been broken, and at the time we were told it was about 350lb. Simon and Mike were flying along but we had 290lb ourselves and we knew a few more double figure fish and we were right back in with a chance. We never slept a wink that night and on what was a very cold night we never heard a buzzer go off, we knew we had some good catches that night and this match was going to the wire."
"At 10am we all gathered on the far bank and everyone’s total was added up and confirmed. Terry and I went straight over to Simon and Mike and shook their hands as we knew they were our biggest rivals.
Terry asked Simon what their weight was and Simon said 473lb and that has been confirmed. We knew right then that we were off to the Wales Carp Masters final. We estimated that we had about 512lb and we knew that we couldn’t be 39lb out on our calculations, then John Carney confirmed it - and WE HAD WON !!!!"
"Funny thing about fishing, we had what we thought was the worst peg on the lake but yet we still won. This just goes to show that the final is anyone’s to take as the fish at Celtic lakes don’t just follow the wind. But for now we have the Welsh record and a place in the final."
Copy and images courtesy of www.walescarpmasters.co.uk
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