Saturday 13/10/1990 - Division 5 - National Championship - River Trent - City of Bristol

Having left Fry's AA we resurrected the City of Bristol team under the sponsorship of Steve  Robinson the owner of ICEMECH. For me this meant starting again from the bottom in division five. 

I think it was only Tony that had fished it once before in the Matchman of the year final. I happened to meet Dennis Salmon on the Gloucester Canal the then Anglers Bookie. I asked what odds he would give me on Tony. "Who" he said and gave me 200:1 so I put £10 win on him. I saw Dennis again later and he made a point of saying he was shitting it for the first half of the match as Tony was well ahead of everyone else. Unfortunately for me and Tony his peg dried up.

We had a strong River team line up pictured.

We managed to get Wayne Swinscoe the Trent Legend to help us, spending the day with him walking all the sections. Wayne did arrange it so we were by the Lord Nelson pub. Wayne certainly liked his "Dark".

Pete Sivell had brought his feeder rod to check if was up to the long chucks to the far side. At Hoveringham Pete tied on an arlesey bomb and tried casting to where Wayne suggest he try to reach. Unfortunately for Pete he didn't have enough line on his reel and lost Line and sinker mid river.

I must say Wayne's knowledge of the river was impressive - nothing indecisive with this man. Peg by peg run down giving very few options of tackle. Just set up the feeder here and cast over there into the shadow for chublets, expect bites immediately. A whip here for Gudgeon  so on and so forth - he made things easy for us. I was left wishing I lived near this river.

No actual line wetting before the big day.

I booked the Sherwood Forest Hotel for our Friday overnight stay. Most of us had to work on the Friday and met up at Tony's shop at closing time. In convoy we didn't get to the hotel until after 21:00. It was a bit posh but not too shabby for me. However, the dining room had closed. After booking in we had to go through the lounge to our rooms where residents were sat with their after dinner drinks listening to a guy in dinner jacket playing a grand piano. It was interesting to see their response watching 12 anglers walking across the dance floor with grubby fishing tackle. As always on these Nationals we signed the official secrets act - what goes on at pre-national nights stays at pre-nationals.

98 teams of 12. 1,176 anglers. Decent turn out then.

I was drawn peg B8 section Holme March Weir Field. I could hear and smell the weir but not see it. Wayne was doing the rounds trying to get to us before the start. He told me to move my box upstream 1 metre (within the rules) and fish the waggler feeding on top of the the float. Delighted to hear it was a float peg. I just set up the waggler whilst everyone around me set up all sorts. The river was very wide which meant there were anglers opposite but wouldn't be an issue.

An easy match pursued fished at 25 metres with wag and mag. I think it was second cast I caught a 1 lb Tench!!! Didn't expect that nor the anglers around me. More amazement when I had another 1 lb Tench. I then started to catch the odd decent Roach whilst all around me were struggling. Ivan Marks was helping the team on the next peg who was blanking resulting in him fishing for fry in between large margin stones. Ivan came up to me and renamed me Tinca Tinca. Some years later we drew next to each other on the Trent and he immediately announced to his large gallery he was next to Mr.Tinca Tinca. Towards the end my peg got better with the penny dropping that I hadn't been feeding enough - bugger. Anyway with a blank one side and one tiny fish the other I was please to weigh 7 lb 8 oz for 54 points.

The team finished 24th but we weren't disappointed to find out that we didn't get promoted as the following year the National was on the Gloucester Canal - Home ground for us at the time.

The national was won by one of our local teams Avon Bait. With Team Bristol coming 4th just missing out on a medal. Unlucky.

Result: