Going For Gold... Jeannette Halliday

This entry was posted on 6th September, 2013

You may have heard that the England Ladies recently won gold, fishing the World Championships in Slovenia, you may have also heard that our very own Jeannette Hailday was part of the winning team!

Well here's the chance to read Jeannette's story as she's kindly written about her week away with the England Ladies.

Going For Gold!

The Journey

I didn’t sleep a wink Friday night, I was just too excited, like a kid at Christmas… why? It was because I was about to have my first taste of the Ladies World Championships!

This year the event was going to be staged on the River Sava, in Radace, Slovenia.

I had to be up early, handy really considering I couldn’t sleep anyway, as Gary Bull was picking me up just before 7.00am. I didn’t have huge amounts of luggage with me as all my fishing tackle was being driven there by the England managers Dave Brooks and Ed Warren, I couldn’t believe it was going to take them a whole 24 hours to get there!

The drive to the airport gave me plenty of time to think and as I sat in the car my head was spinning with all things fishing. I must have contemplated every possible situation! Have I packed everything? Did I make enough rigs? Will the river run fast or slow? The prep for this event had been mind blowing; I had been making rigs and tying hook lengths from 6.30 to 10.30 nearly every night for the past month!

Once at the airport I waited for the other girls, once they arrived we met up with Dick Clegg and Joe Roberts and enjoyed a last coffee on UK soil.

Finally the moment came and it was time to board, time to say good bye to England and time to embark on the trip of a lifetime.

The Arrival

On arrival one of the first things I noticed was what a beautiful place Slovenia was, mountains valleys and breathtaking scenery.

We weren’t due to fish until the Monday but we decided to have a practice on the other side of the river. Even though we were well away from the match pegs it was still an important first taste of fishing in Slovenia!

I was positioned in the middle of the section, with Helen Dagnall one side and Sam Sims the other, we had all been given different groundbait mixes to try to see if anything particularly grabbed the fishes attention. After around three hours of fishing we had a weigh in, Emma Pickering came out on top with 56lb, Helen Dagnall was next with 54lb and I followed with 48lb. I fished and landed all my catch on my top 5 kit and 3 gram rigs, not a bad start, I was happy!

The Draw

We sat around the table and enjoyed a cold beer whilst we were preparing for the practice draw, everyone was in high spirits and the mood was good. Box numbers were drawn and we are told we had boxes 13,18,11,8, and 5. As you can imagine it was very busy, with 90 anglers split into 18 teams of 5 the whole event was buzzing, a hive of activity. The figure of 90 doesn’t even include the managers and event organizers!

The Pegs

Box 13

Was Top 6 and a half deep, which for anyone who doesn’t know is mega deep! The bulk of the catch is this area is Vimba and a few Roach. Tactics to fish this stretch were 6gr to 12gr rigs matched with really robust hooklengths. The area was packed with boulders and it was hard work trying to avoid them! The fishing from this area was not a patch on the practice session; I think we were spoilt with that!!

Box 18

Once again this is also very deep, I enjoyed a slightly better session, catching more Vimba, Roach and Bleak. Still a lot of the emphasis of the day was trying different bait mixes.

Box 11

Without sounding like a broken record! This was also mega deep; once again I also had the added fun of a swim full of boulders! It was pretty hard going, I made the decision to feed lots of hemp and caster to see if it worked and to see if it held the fish in the area for longer. With no real difference or uptake in fish landed it was another method we could cross off the list.

Box 8

This was probably the hardest section, very patchy and pretty fishless, alternating between maggot and then bloodworm hook baits as the bites tailed off. Interesting we learnt a few things about fishing with joker, I fed over 5 litres of it and got totally Bleaked out… perhaps another thing to cross off the list? Interestingly Sticky Mag seemed to playing a large part at this venue, with anglers either side catching the slightly better bonus fish using it.

Box 5

From what I’d been told this area was known as Barbel alley! It totally different from the other areas and it requires stronger tackle and different rigs. I had been given the end peg and enjoyed a fantastic first hour catching Vimba, I then introduced the Sticky Mag and started to attract the Barbel! Having never caught one before I was taken back by there power and some how I got ‘seen off’ six times in total! Next to be Julie Abbot, who certainly knew the score, landed most of hers and it was a fantastic learning curve just watching her in action.

The Opening Ceremony & Team Selection

The team was picked and unfortunately I didn’t make the first five. I wasn’t too disheartened as I’d had an awesome week with some fantastic ladies, they had all earned there place and deserved to take there chance.

I certainly hadn’t disgraced myself and it was extremely comforting to be told this by the management team, who were impressed with my performance and thought I’d fished well.

Day One

After having some groundbait stolen from our chalets we were left with no Sensas River Black! So after a few tweaks, we managed to get by, and were soon ready to fish!

I had been assigned as Helen Dagnall's wingman (wingwomen!) for the first day and by coincidence/luck she had drawn the peg I’d fished the previous day! This was very useful as I was able to tell her where I’d fed, where I’d caught and where the snags were.

It was a mammoth task trying to observe the rest of the section, with anglers dotted over a large length, hundreds of spectators and tree’s obscuring my view, I was up against it!

I started off with an hourly fish count which really helped; I knew Helen was ahead of most, with the exception of the Czech anglers who had landed a couple of big Vimba.

At the end of the day Helen weighed in just over 8kg, which saw her take 3^rd place in her section, this was where I thought she was, so I was happy my fish counting and observation had been well judged.

Being Wingman/women/runner for Helen can be daunting in itself! I remember doing it last year and she has a canny knack of vastly underestimating the size of her fish! However, I kept telling her, you won’t trick me! Pinocchio…

After day one the Croatian team were leading the event with 26 points, it was all quite tight in behind with one team on 30, two on 31, two on 34 and us on 38. We currently stood around 8^th place and still felt we had a chance at a medal, with the large sections and competitiveness at a high, anything could happen!

Day Two

It was decided the team would remain the same and to be honest I couldn’t agree more, our only dodgy result from the previous day came from the worst peg on the section!

This time Helen draws three pegs away from where she’d been the previous day, which she was reasonably happy with. As soon as the match started so did the rain and so did the lightning! This was a disaster, as conditions like this could have seen the match abandon and finished as it was! Fortunately the lightning and rain eased and the fish switched on.

Helen started to catch well, mainly small Vimba, but good weight builders, anglers around her were also catching and perhaps slightly bigger fish, but she was definitely in the mix.

In the other sections, section A and D, Julie Abbott and Sam Sims were catching well; however sections C and E, where Emma Pickering and Wendy Locker were, were a little trickier.

Three hours in and there are some bigger fish being caught in Helens section; I had her down for about 6kg so she needed some slightly bigger fish. A big ball of Sticky Mag is assembled and dropped from a height, would this kick the bigger fish into feeding? We were hoping so!

Sue enough a few moments later the Sticky Mag does the business, the float buries and the line disappears! You just know it’s a Barbel before you hit it! Seven sections of pole go up in the air and Helen hangs tough, not giving the fish an inch, soon it’s subdued and safely in the landing net!

I shouted over the radio like an old cowboy, Yeeeeeeehah! Instantly everyone knew that Helen had just landed a Barbel, after lasooing one the previous day it had become a little running joke amongst us all. Yeeeeehah had become the code word!

Through the next hour Helen managed a couple more Barbel and when the match ended it transpired that these bigger fish had secured her second place in the section! It was a right result for us both!

With Helen’s second place finish we were eager to find out what the other girls had done and the word on the bank was that Julie was 4^th and Sam was possibly 3^rd. News on Wendy and Emma was a little vague but it was a tough section and we’d thought they’d struggled.

As news slowly filtered through we found out that Wendy had finished 3^rd and that Emma had finished around 10^th, although possibly even lower.

We were waiting nervously and desperately trying to do the maths in our head, could we have possibly secured a bronze medal or something?

After congratulating Helen and taking a quick picture of her catch, I was then off up the bank to try and find out what was happening.

I eventually caught up with a beaming Joe Roberts and the conversation went a little something like this…

Joe: We’ve got a medal!

Me: That’s great, a bronze medal!

Joe: No!

I gasped and replied

Me: Silver?

Joe: No it’s GOLD!

As those words came from his mouth, that was it, I was gone, a blubbering mess ensued!

After all that, it turned out that Emma had actually finished 6^th in her section! Meaning we had obliterated everyone on day 2 only accumulating 18 points, with the nearest team to us on nearly 30! It was an absolutely stunning result and an unbelievable performance from everyone involved, I know some of the others had already written us off after day one.

I ran back to Helen and told her the good news, we then shouted down to Julie in section A and told her of the feat, all of us were stunned! What a comeback!

To say I was proud would be an understatement; I’d spent a week In an amazing place, with some amazing people. Everyone who was involved was totally dedicated to their country and to their fishing. Everyone had raised there own funds and organized there own sponsors and all this hard work had paid off.

I just hope I get picked again to be part of an amazing England Ladies Team.

PROUD

Jeannette Haliday.