A good season for Chris & Stef

I renewed my partnership with Chris Rambaud for a series of club competitions that we attend yearly to support the organisers and promote both Fox International and Mistral Baits brands. Hectic schedules for both of us meant that we had to choose carefully where to go this year, and five events where short listed. -We started the season by entering the Alpine Carp Championships, which we won after a hard fought battle against a team of young anglers that I had the pleasure to coach on a regular basis and which Chris and I support the best we can. It is really nice indeed to see a new generation of skilled anglers coming through who also have great ethics. Well done to Guy and Greg! -Next stop was the big annual event “Arles Carp Challenge” on the Rhône river. A record attendance with several high profile teams meant the draw was going to be more crucial than ever. We got lucky enough to get the upstream wing, which not only fishes well but also has plenty of tree cover for shade, which is vital in this part of the world come mid summer! The fishing started slowly for us as expected as we had decided against baiting up too heavily from the outset, this often resulting in the swim drying due to catfish invasion! The strategy paid of as our catching rate kept improving over the week-end whilst others were tumbling. We worked our way up to second place by feeding constantly small amounts of Mistral Orange Squid and Oyster Fish Euro Boilies. We got beat by the downstream wing for 500g, by the only other team to have applied the same baiting strategy. I grabbed the biggest fish prize also!

-A month later we were back in the camargue for the Entressin Enduro, a three day battle on a well stocked water with fish hard to please due to the extreme richness and diversity of natural food sources. The draw was not so kind this time, and we got the first peg down from a wing, which was grabbed by a top local team. I let Chris develop a (very) long range strategy to try and intercept the fish passing beyond the wing swim’s bait, whilst I got set up on a platform match fishing style fishing the feeder to a reed bed. We worked our socks off and managed second place down 2kg from our neigbours, but with a higher total of fish. It was the first time this peg produced that way, and I think it was both down to strategy and superior quality of baits! -Fourth event was the Manosque Tournament, which we had won the previous year. It really seemed like our luck had run out though, as we drew the swim known as the “dead peg”, which had not produced a fish since 1999! Why the organisers keep it on is a mystery, but never mind! We assessed the swim best we could and stuck to our guns hoping for a passing fish. We took it in turns to go and help out a team nearby composed by two brothers aged 12 and 15, after checking with the competition if it was OK. In fact all teams came to visit the lads and offered support as well as some freebies, which I found great. The kids finished fourth and we managed fifth with a last hour fish! The overall catch rate was unusually poor for this event, but extremely high temperatures were probably to blame. -Finally we attended the finals of the Arcilor Mittal carp championship, which we had finished third at in 2007. The draw was again abysmal, but the atmosphere brilliant with thirty teams from around France. We manage to salvage something in the end by fishing the opposite bank casting right under an overhanging fig tree. We were fishing Mistral Rosehip topped with a small square of fig, which got the fish potty! I have asked Allan if we could make an addition to the Isotonic range with a fig flavour, but the response has so far been, well let’s say mitigated! Many thanks to Steve Cole At Fox International and Caroline Reed at Mistral Baits for supplying first class donations to those events!