World Junior Shore Championship

I have just returned from fishing the world championships in Labenne in France where we had a great time this is a brief summary of how it went.
 
In practice the whole team were catching plenty of fish using three types of unusual ragworms and lugworms. We were fishing very close in to the beach, at about ten meters.

First day
The first day we fished on the beach at Tarnos we all caught plenty of small bass and bream and a couple mullet.  The team finished comfortably first on the day and we had all the team members high up on the individuals. Also the under 21s team finished first on the day.

Second day
On the second day we fished the beach at Capbreton and caught similar to the first day. The team finished second on the day, but were still in first overall. We still had four of the five team members in the top ten individually. The youth team were third on the day but were also holding on to top spot.

Third day
Third day the weather conditions took a turn for the worst, the waves increased in size and we weren’t prepared for it. All the fishing we had done during the week was nothing like the last two days. There were definitely less fish about and they were much further out roughly 100 meters, but the fish that were caught were a better size. Decent bass and bream were the main catch. We ended up tied third on the day but were knocked down to fourth place because the other country had a section win. The under 21s dropped to third, but were still in with a chance of a medal.

Final day
On the fourth and final day we were lying joint second needing a win on the day to take the gold, the youth also needing a good result to come in the medals. Today there were shoals of bream a few bass, with the odd surprise bigger bream. We had a couple of good results within the team on the last day but it was not enough, we either couldn’t catch the amount required or just couldn’t catch the bigger fish. The match was decided on weight, this meant that the bigger fish were simply too much to contend with. We ended 5th on the final day, we knew this wasn’t good enough for 1st or 2nd but were sure we had the bronze. The results confirmed we had the bronze, and we were disappointed not to have finished higher but were still over the moon to have come away with a medal. I was proud when I went up to receive my bronze medal and will always have a great memory of the championships and hope to qualify again for next years team. Unfortunately the under 21s had a bad day and missed out on the medals, coming one point off the bronze position. Individually I finished twelfth overall.

           Results

U16                U21
1st France            1st France        
2nd Italy               2nd Spain
3rd England         3rd Italy