24th June 2022

Results:

1. Scotland 65 fish 2968 pts 47 placing pts
2. Wales 55 fish 2589 pts 50 placing pts
3. Ireland 59 fish 2621 pts 51 placing pts
4. England 56 fish 2517 pts 56 placing pts

Individual Winner: Ross McKeen, Scotland 5 placing pts

Largest Fish: Terry Bromwell, Wales 73.3 cms

AT TEFF was represented by: Cameron Craigs (capt), James Atkinson, Harry Fox, Chris Micallef & Carl Nixon. Congratulations to Scotland on their convincing victory.

Carl Nixon reports: Arriving for pre-match practice on Sat 18th, we were greeted with strong 35mph+ winds. Looking at the forecast we knew match week would be settled, very warm and with sporadic cloud, all teams were in for some excellent fishing.

These gusts stayed until late Sunday where we covered Beats B & C in relative shelter from the weather. On beats B & C, known as the Streams and Upper Parkhill, we were soon experiencing the excellent fishing we had been told about. Although the deceptive flow to the river and some of the hardest wading we’ve experienced made the fishing unsteady under foot, the practice was off to a great start.

Monday we were joined by current EPP & National Champion James Atkinson, who had been taking part in an EPP event on the River Ure. James joined us on Parkhill, Beat D. Where we were lucky enough to encounter some brilliant fishing, with several of the team landing fish to 5lb. As the day progressed, a pattern and a possible match plan was starting to take shape. To that point we decided that to hopefully save increasing fishing pressure, we limited catches to 2/3 fish and move on. We progressed to Beat E in the afternoon. Where yet again we stuck to the 2/3 fish plan and steadily put together a comprehensive beat map and approach.

Tactics were discussed at length at the regular nightly team debrief, practice flies, thoughts on set-ups, and tales of lost monsters.

Beats were drawn Wednesday evening, with the surprising outcome of all teams having several anglers fishing their team mates’ water from the morning sessions. This alone made all teams have a slight rethink to their match plans.

Small drab flies in the 14-18 range, either fished at distance with floated sighter or nymphing style on the level line.
Emerger style patterns for the slow water
Duo in the streamy riffles.

Match Day

As we all headed off to our respective start points, the weather was extremely warm for the 09:30 start, 24 degrees, mist in the air, and a very high air pressure made fishing very sticky.

Harry drew Beat A, James Beat B, Beat C for myself, Chris drew the lovely beat D and Cam drew Beat E.

As we met for lunch after session 2, the scores were tentatively worked out, tales from all teams of blanks on some sessions, and some high catch returns for all teams, made the halfway score very tight. Scotland 20, Wales 26, Ireland 25, England 29. Unfortunately Harry failed to get on the score card in the morning session, which meant we needed a great afternoon session. Having a chat, we knew our match plan was correct, we had all generated fish or chances, so we regrouped and knew we could make the afternoon session ours.

As we met after session 4, we knew the scores would be tight, and after doing some quick maths, we knew that we had won both session 3 & 4, all we could have asked for and more.

As the result was announced, Scotland were congratulated and deserved winners. Sadly our session wins in 3 & 4 weren’t enough as the place points just weren’t where we needed them to be.

We stuck to our individual & team match plan, and unfortunately it didn’t quite pay off as we had hoped.

I couldn’t have asked any more from the rest of the team during practice & match day, we were 110% committed, just not our day.

Thank you to Team Captain Cameron Craigs who led from the front all week.

Fellow team mates Chris Micallef, James Atkinson, Harry Fox, Mark Lynch & myself.

Thank you to the following who kindly supported Team England.

Jason Lieverst & Nicole Darland of MasterNymph USA
Mike Laycock of Craghoppers
Franta Hanak of Hanak Competiton.
Glasgow Angling Centre.

Last but certainly not least, every angler, and family members who very kindly bought raffle tickets, bonus ball tickets and donated where they could.