The 72 hours competition took place at Lac Du Bourdon in France from 21st - 24th September 2016, and is the official FIPSed World Championships. A record breaking 26 nations took part, the largest field ever in an international carp fishing match, with England as defending champions.

The format is a team event, with three pairs representing each country. Such a large number of participants this year meant the sections were split into 2 groups, and all eye’s were on the big 5. The draw saw England facing favourites France in all three sections, heavyweights Russia and Croatia in one, but avoiding Romania altogether.

Hot and flat calm weather made for difficult angling conditions but England went into an early lead on day 1 and looked strong. Home nation France were immensely powerful and took the lead in two sections by the end of day 2. They put on an impressive display throughout the match to take individual gold and silver honors. A poor draw for their final section meant that they could not amass enough points to take the overall win. England battled hard throughout, but simply could not get the fish to feed in the numbers required to take the gold for a second time.

“It was an amazing exciting exhilarating and disappointing competition all at the same time” announced England Manager Rob Hughes. ‘One extra fish in two of our sections could have put England on the podium, but the same could be said for a number of teams. The positions around us were changing all of the time, and one minute we were out of the running, the next back in. Conditions were tough, nothing like practice, and the result was influenced as much by what other teams were doing rather than what we were. It was a scratching match and fished hard, and so did we but at the end of the day we were not good enough this year to win. A massive well done to Russia and France for their amazing performances”.

As with last year, when England won the title, there was drama right at the very end. Lithuania took the lead on the final night, and led Russia by 1 point with Romania 1 point below again. On the last morning with the clock almost run down, Russia caught a fish in C Section that would gain them a point, tie them with Lithuania, and they would win on a weight count back. Russia had snatched championship victory with 1 hour left to go.

The England team members were;
Rob Hughes (Manager)   Graham Mabey ( asst Manager)
Mark Bartlett (captain)   Harry Charrington
Billy Flowers     Jamie Londors
Tom Maker     Kev Hewitt
Wayne Mansford     Ryan Need
Neil Rivers     Chris Holmes
Karl Pitcher

Top 6 Team Results;
Gold Russia   7
Silver Lithuania   7
Bronze  Romania   11
4   France 13
5   Croatia 13.5
6   England 14

Individual results;
1 Matthieu Farge / Matthieu Neyrat   Fr
2 Olivier Renaud / Anthony Hennequin  Fr
3 Dalibor Danaj / Hrvoje Jakopcevic   Cr

Report provided by Rob Hughes, Team England Manager

Source: Angling Trust Fishing News