Division 2 National Championship Winner Andy Jane Wins With 24kg 48g

The Division Two National Championships was held on the Gloucester Canal this year and was won by our very own Andy Jane. Here is his account for the day.

With COVID19 issues still rumbling on, a remote draw was held on Friday afternoon on the Angling Trust competition Facebook page. With this in mind the Sensas Lobbys team decided to gather on Friday evening to discuss the teams draw. After a team discussion we worked out that the draw was not a favourable one for us but we had to make the most of it.

The draw this year put me on peg G4 at Splat up a little known area as parking can be a problem in this section. I thought it should be a ok draw but not one I would run to. I arrived at the section about 8am and straight away started getting people ask me what this area was like. I told them that it should be an ok area but not the best as the water is very clear.

When i arrived at my peg i set up my seat box and to my shock had a bream roll just to the right of me. At this point i new that there was a chance of a bream or two in this area.

The team plan was to fish 3 lines one at around 5-6m, one at 13m and a feeder line. All my pole rigs where set up on Sensas Jean Francois floats from 0.80g to 2g these floats are perfect for the canal which can flow quite hard at times and is around 15ft deep in the middle.

I started of by feeding 2 balls of ground bait at 6 meters, 5 balls at 13 meters and then cast my feeder 5 times to bait that area also.. The ground bait line was to my right and was fed with dead pinkie and a small amount of worm. The pole lines where fed with the ground bait and a good amount of dead pinkie.

Most of the team had worked out that at the moment on the canal the best ground bait seemed to be Sensas sweet lake fishmeal and Sensas black lake mix.

Due to the water being so clear at this end on the canal i also decided to put a bread feeder line in. This usually is a banker for a few bites at the start of the match.

After feeding all these lines I started on the bread feeder on the far shelf. This is usually a quick response line and if you are going to catch is usually with in 15min or so, I didn't have a bite, so at this point I thought it was going to be a Gruller.

Again it just shows that fish don't always do what you think they will. After about 15 min I switched over to the ground bait line and with regular feeding started catching some Rudd. My thought were that this was ok and I was happy doing this as I was putting fish in the net. I am a great believer in that you need to have feed going into attract fish to your feed area.

To my surprise the 3 guys that were to my left all started on the pole line which is usually for this canal as fish can take some time to settle on this line. Also the 2 end pegs started catching almost straight away. This was a bit concerning as they were catching 4lb bream and I was only catching Rudd.

After about an hour and a half I decided to have a look on my pole line and missed 3 bites with in about 5 minutes. However the 4th bite I hooked in to a 3lb bream. After this fish the swim went very quiet which is normally the way in this clear water.

I then came in to my 6 meter line where I quickly had 2 more 4lb bream and a couple of roach. For the rest of the match this is more or less how things stayed apart from in the last 2hrs I did catch a few bream on the feeder line.

At the end of the match I thought the three guys to my left had all beaten me but to my surprise I had 24kg 48g and they had between 15kg and 19kg. After talking to the rest of the team i found out there were also some 20kg+ weights at Purton down section but I was not sure if they had beaten me or not.

It turns out that my 24kg was the top weight on the day and the team had come second being just beaten by saints.

I am super proud to be the team captain of such a great bunch of lads. Great work