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The
England Ladies Flyfishing Association are proud to say that they
have been awarded GOLD medals at the Home International Flyfishing
Championship held on Bewl Water on 19th June. Many of the girls were practising
on the water prior to the official practise days and it was apparent
that, due to weather conditions, the fish were very deep in the
water. It was obvious that we needed to get down to them to stand
any chance of catching any trout at all.
One of our team, Sue Hunter, travelled from Bewl up to Fulling Mill
in Redhill, Surrey to get an emergency supply of heavy Tiemco hooks
so that our fly tyer, Steve Newsome, could tie a range of buzzers
for the team. We haoped that by fishing deep and very imitative,
then we stood a chance. Practise days proved very difficult with
only the odd fish being caught by any of the teams but the deep
buzzers did work once you reached the right depth.
On match day the conditions were very similar making it very
difficult to locate and catch trout. Those that did found most of
the takes at the dam between the tower and Chingley Wood, and also
down Hook Straight.
Sue Shaw (Press Officer) said "I can cast a pretty good line
out but, in the windy conditions, it was very hard to get the flies
down deep enough – in total I was probably about 40’ down. I
used 4 claret buzzers on a 25 foot leader on my Powerhead WF8
floating line and Diamondback VSR rod. I just kept up with the line
and only started a slow figure-of-eight when the main line had all
but disappeared in front of the boat. By now my fly line was at
least 15’ under the water! It was at this stage that you would get
a take if at all – when they did come they were vicious takes! The
end result made all the hard work worth it. Along with Mary Hopper
(Captain) and Paul Miller (Team Manager), I was delighted that the
team won Gold medals. On a personal note I was over the moon with
winning the prestigious ‘Graham Smith’ bronze for being Top
International Rod".
England sponsor Chris Leibbrandt from Masterline said "It is
great when one of our sponsored teams win Gold medals at an
International – I am so proud of the whole team for their efforts
in pulling off this tremendous victory". Howard Mackenzie
(Estate Manager at Bewl Water) was delighted that the hosts England
chose Bewl Water as a venue for the International. Howard said
"Usually at this time of the year fish are taking on top of the
water but, this year, the water is quite low and the surface
temperature quite high resulting in very difficult conditions".
Wendy Miller (Chairman of the ELFA) said "This whole event was
great, from the venue and the hotel and of course our victorious
team. It was a great effort on behalf of all the committee to stage
such a successful event".
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