This is a demo store. No orders will be fulfilled.
Toggle Nav
Ladies World Championships – Jeannette Halliday
An unlucky world champs for the Ladies.
As many of you will know I dropped out of the England Ladies trials in March, after taking longer than expected to recover from an operation, I made the decision not to put myself in the mix for team selection. Instead I offered my help and support as a bank runner for the week, after all I wanted to be part of it in some way!
Day 1
After getting in the wrong lane for the ferry at Dover and having to go right back round with Dick Clegg sporting an A4 picture of an owl (symbol for all to see we had messed up!) we finally set sail for Dunkirk before heading to La Louviere in Belgium to meet up with the girls who had travelled the day before. It was great to see all the regular faces again, along with some new ones; Kayleigh Smith.
At first glance the venue looked good and it was rumoured to be, with the Charleroi Canal well known for plenty of Roach, Perch, Skimmers and possible an Ide or Tench if you were lucky.
With it being such a large stretch of water there were plenty of very big boats patrolling up and down, which made things difficult at times, I think almost everyone experienced a ‘wash out’! However we were told that the boat traffic would ease by the weekend.
The bow draws for the week were as follows… 5, 3, 15, 17 and 11.
We headed back to La Louviere but unbeknown to us we didn’t have the sat nav co-ordinates for the hotel so spent an hour and a half driving around streets, that I must say all looked the same, before admitting defeat and rather embarrassingly getting a escort back to the digs courtesy of the local police! Needless to say the girls were all filming it and laughing at Dick, Joe, Adam and myself!
Day 2 - Box 5
The girls all catch quite well and some better quality fish make an appearance, but unfortunately a massive drift of duckweed brings the day to an abrupt end, it was just impossible to fish through it! Julie Abott did manage a nice bream on a real light elastic which gave a great account of itself, giving her the right run around!
Day 3 - Box 3
Didn’t start well as I dropped my phone down a portaloo!!!! But once again some better quality fish made an appearance, with some quality Roach falling to new girl Kayleigh Smith, however the fishing was still relatively hard, with no specific pattern. I even ventured off to spy on the local teams to see what and how they were catching, but this offered very little clues and by the end of the day everyone was scratching their heads!
Day 4 - Box 15
Was even harder than the previous day, the catch rates dropped right out and this left Dave Brooks with a bit of a dilemma in regards to team selection. Eventually after a fair bit of deliberation the team was named and was as follows…
Helen Dagnall Wendy Locker Julie Abbott Sam Sim Abbi Kendall
Day 5 - Box 17
At the section draw we wait with great anticipation to see what order we’ll get to pick, in the end we are drawn out 6th. The section and peg draws were as follows…
World Championships Day 1
Sam Sim - A section Abbi Kendall - B section Julie Abbott - C section Helen Dagnall - D section Wendy Locker - E section
Sam Sim - A15 Abbi Kendall - B5 Julie Abbot - C12 Helen Dagnall - D8 Wendy Locker - E2
On paper the draw looked disappointing and in reality it was exactly that, with Sam at the wrong end of section A and Wendy the wrong end of section E, there’s nothing the girls could do, but overall as a team we were really up against it.
How true that was, as unfortunately the girls struggled and all return with big points totals, finishing the day 11th on the podium, in a rather impossible position. You simply cannot help a bad draw and sometimes in these big events you just need a bit of luck!
World Championships Day 2
After the disappointment of Day 1 and the realisation that a chance of a medal was slim to non-existant it was decided new girl Kayleigh Smith would be given her first call up to the full team, giving her the chance to gain a valuable slice of big match experience.
After a slightly better round of draws the girls rallied hard and all caught fish, pushing them from 11th in the table to finish a very respectable 6th overall.
Here’s to next year and hopefully to some better draws!
I know these anglers give it their all for their country and i'm proud to be a part of it.
Until next times, tight lines... Jeannette Haliday
