BEGINNERS LUCK?
Maybe, but Simon Willsmore had a great smile while collecting the best part of £4,000 after winning the prestigious King of Clubs Festival on the lakes of County Cavan and Leitrim.
Winner Simon Willsmore and his first day catch
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Of course he isn't a beginner, in fact he's loaded with fishing talent and made that quite obvious with a string of outstanding catches that included winning his section of the first two days, he followed that with a section second and third, slipping (!) to fifth on the final day.
Simon - who lives in North London - has personal sponsorship from DNA Tackle and is a salesman for Milo Tackle, started his week with 13-940 kilos (30lb) on Rosduff Shore, which is part of the Gowna complex, with a net of skimmer bream to 500 grammes and about a dozen small roach.
He was fishing with a 12 metre pole in 5 metres depth, using mostly small red worms on a size 16s hook under a 3.5 gramme float.
That formed the basis of attach on his first three days that took in Corfree Shore for 22-700 kilos (50lb) and Leonard's Shore where he had 20-770 kilos (45lb).
By the end of the third day, Simon was starting to stretch away from the pack and went to Lough Eonish and changed to red maggot on the hook and feeding a small ball of groundbait every cast, working between 12 and 13 metres on the pole to catch mostly roach to put 12-500 kilos (27lb) on the scales.
For the fifth and final day he moved to Kilglass Lake with a welcome 9 kilos safety zone and rather than risk all of his hard work, the would-be champion played safe and stuck to the pole with caster, and loose feeding caster in bright sunshine and often flat calm conditions and got his reward with 11.020 kilos (24lb) of roach and small skimmer bream.
So Simon Willsmore had an 80-930 kilos total catch to collect the £3,000 first prize from Irish Ferries and Tourism Ireland, the John Croasdale Memorial prize and almost £1,000 from the optional pools.
“It has been wonderful”, Simon shouted from the stage.
“I shall be back and recommend the King of Clubs to all of my friends”.
Kevin Rowles
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Following in his wake was Boston's Alastair Ogilvie who was in the same section throughout the festival, again sticking to the pole, and getting the festival's heaviest one-day haul of 25-560 (56lb) of bream, hybrids and roach, on Leonard's Shore.
Staff from the Northern Region Fisheries Board, led by Michael Fitzpatrick, took responsibility for pegging the match lengths, weighing fish and compiling the results for this 108-man event.
Among their statistics was an average weight per peg of 8.5 kilos (18lb) each during the festival - the best set of festival results in Ireland this year.
Overall result:
1 Simon Willsmore, Milo, 8-930 kilos
2 Alastair Ogilvie, Boston, 71-980
3 Tony Kearsley, Enniskillen, 71-790
4 Kevin Rowles, Devizes, 70-400
Simon Willsmore and the catch that clinched it
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5 Paul Udell, Preston, 64-980
6 Paul Bennett, Sensas Wipsey, 64-560
Day winners:
D1 Michael Fitzpatrick, Dell's, 17-380
D2 Simon Willsmore (Milo) 22-700
D3 Alastair Ogilvie, Boston, 25-560
D4 Paul Udell, Preston, 21-500
D5 Phil Darwin, Edgley Sports, 21-000
