24.10.11

The Urban Match

The second annual Urban Match was held on St Katherine’s Dock, in central London just before this site launched. It pitted some of Guru’s finest match anglers against two of Korda’s carp-angling elite. Defending champ, Mick Bull, Adam Rooney, Andy Pell, Tony Curd and James Cooper represented the match contingent, while Ali Hamidi and Elliott Gray turned out for the carpers. The whole event was filmed for Sky Sports.
The dock is a unique setting for this event and certainly attracted plenty of attention from the passing suits, on their way to business lunches, deep in the financial hub of the UK. It’s fish stocks are an unknown quantity and had avoided Ali and Dean Macey on previous visits, although Mick Bull caught well in 2010.
Although all the match guys caught, it was James Cooper who eventually emerged victorious, switching between the feeder and the pole to take a winning bag of skimmers. This is how James put together his winning weight, in his own words…
“First, I cupped in three balls of groundbait containing a few pinkies, casters and red maggots at 13 meters, before starting on the feeder, casting about 30 meters towards the boats. I used two dead red maggots on the hook. I stuck with this attack for 30 minutes, but had no indications. So, I came in on the pole, where I caught steadily for about two hours. After this, I had to chop and change baits to keep the bites coming. I also caught a few fish by coming four to five inches off bottom.
Bites then completely dried up on the pole line, so I spent the last 30 minutes on the feeder, taking three skimmers, which were all about 10oz each.
My set up for the day was a 10ft Daiwa Tournament feeder rod and Daiwa tdx reel, loaded with 4lb Drag Line. My end tackle was a running loop feeder to 0.11 N-Gauge and a size-16 Kamasan B560, hook.
On the pole, I used 0.13 to 0.11 N-Gauge to a size-18 Kamasan B560 hook. Elastic was a slip number five.
The pole float was a 1.5g Garbolino D17.”
Well done James!

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