With the previous owner of TopCats arriving in for a holiday, we decided to organise an impromptu, fun, pairs match, and even yours truly was going to have a fish.

This event was slightly different to the normal bar battles because we were fishing over 5 hours. All the other rules were that same, i.e, 1 rod per angler, I bait pack and 1 kg of boilies per team. In this case we all had Crave flavour.

The draw took place, and we were fishing pegs 3, 4 ,5 and 7. With the lake so full and the Carp feeding I thought any peg could win it, even the temperamental Predator Corner swim because the blank peg, Carp Channel next to it gave the team that drew it a lot of water to go at.

My team, Team TopCats, drew Heavens Point. I was happy but, on this day, I would have been happy with any of the pegs.

The match was epic.

Shaun, and his partner, Sean started off like a steam train as the Carp went on the feed, in the Coconut swim. Then the 100lb+ brute of the carp that Shaun caught early, raced them into an early lead.

Gradually our swim came to the boil and the action was non-stop, the prolific Heavens Point is like that, often producing quantity over quality. In fact, in the 5 hours my partner and I , Paul had 21 fish in the 5 hours.

As the final 2 hours came Team Phuket were still clear but Dan and Phil, Bar 64, were catching bigger Carp from the Carp Channel and also catching up fast.

Sean made a schoolboy error and thought the match was 4 hours and basically fed all their bait pack and had to watch in the last hour as they caught only 2 fish in the last hour, the last being a very important 20lb Pacu.

Both Bar 64 and our team went into massive over drive with  10 Carp between us in the last hour, and I managed to lose a very large Arapaima. Even one minute after the final whistle  my partner Paul hooked and landed a 60lb carp which obviously didn’t count. Team Phuket could only look on but held on for the narrowest of wins.

RESULTS:

The numbers say it all, 62 fish, 8 species, average weight 42lb.

Fishing like nowhere else in the world.