The Journey

We drove to Helsingborg to catch the ferry over to Helsingör and make a scheduled stop to meet up with Colin for a bit of a chat and to pick up some "Homemade's" that he had freshly rolled for us that morning. He also had managed to get hold of some trout pellets for us which was a welcome surprise as we had hunted high and low for pellets for this competition.
We were also given a big bag of homemade "Bullar" by Colins wife which we immediately began to munch on.
Mats never saw too many of these as he was concentrating on his driving most of the time, in between dancing around in his seat to techno music and complaining about the lack of road signs in Denmark (and rightly so, you have to guess your way round Copenhagen)

We were on the ferry only long enough to walk to the shop, go to the toilet and up on the deck for a few happy snaps and it was time to get back in the car. We got into Denmark at about 11:30hrs and spent the next hour looking for a shop that we eventually found about 300 meters from where we parked the car. We also visited a tackle shop to stock up on bits and bobs.

We left Helsingör with the next stop being Gisselfeld. After driving for quite sometime, we never saw any signs that had names of villages on that were on our map, so we couldn't relate to where we were on the map. We binned the worthless "Route 66 printout" and rummaged around under all the gear for another map of Denmark.

We found one and this had all the place names on it
that we had passed.
It then dawned on us that we had driven to far south by 70km. This was due to a crap map and had nothing to do with me making rigs when i was supposed to map reading.
So we went 140km out of our way and managed to reachGisselfeld in time for the 16:00hrs kick off.

The Competition

The meeting took place in the car park at the "Kloster" (Abbey) on the same day that Gisselfeld's over 50's were gathering there all armed with bicycles and picnic baskets. We were getting some strange looks as if we had just descended from another planet and their faces of curiosity as you could see them trying to work out what we were going to be doing.

We picked numbers out of a hat (well it was a big Danish blokes hand actually that had been holding a bottle of Tuborg all day) for the allocation of swims and i tried in vain to understand what the big Danish guy was talking about. To me he sounded like the noise you get when you have a hole in your exhaust pipe (avgas system) and i never understood one single word. So the swims had been allocated and we had No.4 swim on the small lake.

We sat in No.4 swim then in No.5 was a Danish team and then in the next swim, a Swedish team, then a Danish team and so on and so on........

We were escorted to the swim by the "Tuborg Man" on his quad bike and we followed in the car. When we got there it was in the grounds of the Abbey and was a typical tourist place to visit. It was actually very nice and the sun shining made it look even better.

Our swim sat right next to the path and our Swedish team mates in swim No.6 were not too far away (Daniel Andersson & Stefan Johansson)

We unloaded the car and Mats drove it back to the car park while i got out the marker float and had a good feel around for any underwater features that we could fish to. It soon became apparent that the whole of the lake was covered in pond weed on the bottom that stuck up about 15cm from the lake bed. I cast the marker float all around our swim for an hour in search of a clear spot but never found one. The only thing i found was a hole in front of Mats's rods that he could maybe put a bait in.

Mats had open water in front of his swim so he decided to fish at long range for the first night as we had some info from Palle Sköldblom that the carp had been caught out in the middle over the last week.

To my right i had a few features to fish to and a reed lined far bank.
I had patches of lilly pads that were thinning out in the autumn weather and an overhanging tree. I put 2 of my baits on the edge of the lilies and launched one over the pads to a clear spot on the far bank

Due to the weed on the bottom pop ups were the chosen hookbaits on all the rods with korda funnelweb PVA mesh full with pellets, chopped boilies, hemp, corn and some other goodies.

By the time i was ready to cast my last rod it had gone dark and i had to cast into the blackness. The first attempt saw my trailing mainline blow into the trees as i couldn't see a thing in the darkness and i was soon putting on a complete new rig after the tree swallowed up my first one. The second attempt did the same thing but somehow i got my rig back intact. I decided enough was enough and cast the rod to a safe area with no chance of getting caught in the trees.

By this time the first carp of the competition had been caught and weighed 9.9kg. It was the Danish lads that were sat opposite us.

It was now time for a sit down an a couple of Carlsberg's.
Nothing happened that night and in the morning we made an English breakfast for ourselves and packed two up to be delivered to Palle Sköldblom & Stephan Nielsen who were fishing on the big lake.

Mats had brought a couple of two way radios so i hooked one on my belt and went to give the lads their breakfast. I met Palle there as Stephan was out and about collecting the fees and chatting with everyone. I was there about 2 minutes when Mats voice emerged from the radio and shouted "You have got a run". I said "hit it" and then ran back to the swim like greased weasel s***. When i got there Mats told me it was snagged up now in the reeds and he couldn't move it.

So i tried one on my old tricks that does get the fish out of the snags sometimes when all else fails. I slackened off the line and just waited to see if the fish was, 1. still there & 2. going to swim out of the snag. The line moved so i knew it was still there and i gave it a minute or so to let it swim out of the snags. I tightened up again but it hadn't come free of the snags. So i gave mats the rod and i grabbed my landing net and waders. I went into the thick reeds and followed the line until i came to the rig end and hopefully a nice fat carp was still there.
It took ages to battle through the reeds with a 42" landing net and chest deep in water. The water was flowing over the top of my waders but i didn't care, i just wanted that fish in the net. I finally came to the leadcore and then carefully positioned my net so that i could get it in the net quickly before it started thrashing about. I pulled my rig slowly through the thick reeds and i came to my lead, the fish must have been inches away but i couldn't see it because of the weed. I parted the reeds slowly and saw it was still there. But i then realized that it was a Coot (Sothöna) and not a carp. It had been hooked in the foot so it came out quite easy.
I put it in the net and shouted to Mats, "I've got it" . I heard Mats say "Yes! Yes!" and i giggled to myself. I shouted over that it was a lf*****g duck and everyone started laughing.

I got back to the swim with my first catch of the comp and had to take some photos just for the record. Meanwhile, there was a rumor flying round the lake that i had caught a "Dog" as someone had thought i shouted "Dog" instead of "Duck".

Dog, Duck or Donkey, either way it wasn't a carp so we were still getting beat.

Then we heard that the Danish had landed another 5 carp during the night and and in the morning (Saturday) . We were also informed that that the Swedish team had landed 2 carp as well taking the scores to
Denmark 6 - 2 Sweden.
Kim Eriksson was the Swedish team member that had landed both carp from swim No.6 on the big lake and they weighed 9.5kg & 8.1kg

We eventually found out the weights of the carp and they were:

Denmark : 12.9kg -12.5kg - 11.6kg - 11.2kg - 9.9kg

Sweden : 9.5kg -8.1kg (Kim Eriksson)

Saturday evening was soon upon us and it was time for a recast. This time i was going to cast out in daylight making sure everything was right. Everything was in order and placed so i could find it in the dark.

I took up the last rod and waded out into the water to get enough room to cast the 13ft 3lbs Rod Hutchinson Sabre that was loaded with a PVA bag.
As i bent into the cast the rod cracked in half at the spiggot that joined the 2 pieces together and the line snapped at the same time. The rig and line went shooting to the far bank and the top half of my rod came down with a splash about 20 meters in front of me. I couldn't believe that a rod of that test curve and quality could snap in two whilst casting a PVA bag. I wasn't going in to retrieve it until after the comp had finished but luckily i had another 13ft Diawa powermesh as a spare which was already rigged up, ready to go.

Out it went for the night and I went over to Palle & Dansken's swim for a few beers and a social. By now they had caught about 12 or so Tench but no carp had graced their net. I called it a night and went back to our swim to find Mats still awake. We chatted and talk crap for a while and it was time for the boots to come off.

I was out like a light and never woke until 07:30hrs on Sunday morning when my left hand delkim screamed into action and the bright blue LED lit up my path. I was up and out of the bivvy with out any shoes and Mats was already on his starting blocks! I hit it and felt the fish was still there, i knew i had to get it through the lilies but there wasn't much resistance from the fish. I then thought it has to be a tench. A couple of tugs and the fish gave up the fight. I was now past the lilies and just waiting to get its head up so we could see what it was. It emerged from the murky lilies and i saw its head. It was a carp and i became very careful when guiding it in the net. She was in and Mats lifted the net with a "gottcha".

We weighed her straight away and the digi scales locked on at 8000g dead. The carp was fat and round and had a weird shaped head and i thought to myself, one i could catch the ugliest carp in the world and a coot in the same competition. But it wasn't a beauty competition, its was a "How fat it is" competition, and i was happy all the same. We sacked her up and waited for an official weighing and witnesses from the Danish team.

8000g it was and it was carp No.3 for Sweden bagged and tagged. But the Danish had caught a further 2 carp during the night so the score now stood at

Denmark 8 - 3 Sweden.

This was the way it stayed for the remainder of the comp and at 12.00hrs (Sunday) it was all over. We had lost to the Danish by 8 - 3 and a total weight of :