WPC England 2017 - Grafham 

It was all a little last minute this year for me. I didn't know that I would be able to fish the WPC England Qualifier this year until the day before, lots of things going on personally made it a difficult decision but I'm glad I went.

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I arrived mid morning on the prefish day and headed straight out to the tower, the plan was to find fish, hit them once to find out what they were then move. First drop 50m off the tower and I had a nice perch to the net. Not a bad start.

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Down by the damn I had a couple more then headed back in, the wind was harsh and the chop was getting up, there were fish about and I was hoping that the guys out in the boats and the other kayak competitors weren't baggin up as this would make the fishing on competition day incredibly hard.

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Had an early night and wasn't up to early which was nice for a tournament, very unlike me to be honest.

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Competition day and with a new exclusion zone of 100m off the towers I decided to skip my first mark and head down towards the damn. Then I saw fish on my Garmin EchoMAP 1022xsv. I dropped down a Realistic Shad and started to drift, fish on. A Zander, I was chuffed. I had another drift with no luck so swapped to a dropshot, set deep but with another Realistic Shad, different colour, bang almost instally into another Zander, bigger this time, two fish in the first hour! Then nothing, the fish were there, they weren't feeding. Off to the damn wall. A few drifts and another small Zander whilst fishing for perch.

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With a lack of bites I moved again up towards the top tower with a large crank bait, this was hit by a nice perch.

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With an hour to go I made a bad decision and went hunting bigger zander, I should have stayed for the perch.

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At the prize giving three of the top four had three zander and a perch... I was called up in 4th place. Better than last year, but wish I hadn't left fish to hunt for fish... school boy error. Next year!