Game Match Results 2008

Spring Bank - Jutland Cup Saturday 16th March	RNRM v Kingsbridge Saturday 5th April	RN v Associates Sat 26th April	Services Competition Thursday 3rd June
RN Open & Pairs Wednesday 4th June	RN v BT Wednesday 18th June	Inter-Commands Wednesday 2nd July	Secretary's Cup Sunday 12th Oct
Trafalgar Shield Saturday 25th October

Click on the match for the Individual Results

RN Open & Pairs
Total Fish	60	Best Brown	Ed Smith
Total Weight	135lb 12oz	Best Rainbow	Nik Tompkins
Average Weight	> 2lb	Best Bag	Mark Glass
Rod Average	> 8lb 4oz	Best Boat	Mark Glass & Ed Smith
Fishing Report
Seventeen anglers competed in this years RN Individual Open and Pairs Fly Fishing Championships which was held at Rutland Water on Wed 4 Jun. This was 3 anglers less than competed last year. Again it coincided with the Plymouth Command Anglian Water trip and followed a day after the newly established Services Championships at Grafham. This ensured we had a significant number of fishermen in the area that had already had the opportunity to sort out any glitches with tackle and blow away any cobwebs since their last outing. Thanks to the awful weather on Tuesday any cobwebs were well and truly washed away providing a good test for the teams new Waterproofs provided courtesy of the RNRM Sports Lottery. The day of the RN Open was a stark contrast to the torrential rain of the previous day. It was bright and warm with very little wind as the boats made a rolling start, exiting the harbour only to find large expanses of flat calm with insufficient breeze to turn over the cast. The calm clear water enabled following fish to be seen chasing pulled orange flies on sunk lines but frustratingly despite this happening several times, no takes came of this method as the fish repeatedly turned away at the last minute. An identical method had proved very successful on the previous day but the fish had obviously moved away as previously productive areas seemed to have dried up and were not producing. Despite some surface activity nymphing tactics didn’t bring much success early in the day either. The high volume of boat movement clearly showed people were not finding it easy as they hunted for the shoals of fish or consistently productive areas. As it turned out although some anglers did find some success with pulling tactics, Chris Andersons 5 fish bag all came to pulled orange blobs, the most productive method was very slow nymphing on midge tips or floating lines. As the day wore on most boats congregated along the South shore of the South arm, with the most successful boats concentrated in an area very close into the bank between Berrybutts and New Zealand Point. After a slow and difficult start for many the fishing did pick up, especially for those who managed to find the method and the shoals in the south arm. 58 fish were caught in total resulting is a rod average of 2.8 which indicates the level of difficulty and frustration that many of us experienced. This was still better than last season when 20 anglers caught 30 fish with a rod average of 1.5 and 8 anglers blanked. This year of the 17 anglers only 3 blanked, including experience anglers such as the top rod of the previous days Services Comp. To save embarrassment I won’t mention his name but his constant outbreak of tourettes with a strong ‘janner’ accent might expose his identity! Surprisingly only a few anglers had requested to be paired with a specific partner for the pairs Comp, not surprisingly one of these pairs won the competition convincingly. Best Rainbow: Nik Tompkins 4lb 1oz Best Brown: Ed Smith 2lb 13oz Best Bag and 2008 RNRM Open Champions: Mark Glass 19lb 9oz Best Boat and 2008 RNRM Pairs Champions: Mark Glass and Ed Smith 34lb 2oz Congratulations to Mark Glass for an outstanding performance in retaining his position as RNRM Fly Fishing Open Champion. He was so confident of winning that he didn’t even bring the trophy back! Last year he won with 7 fish, this year he improved upon that performance by catching his 8 fish bag limit with a couple of hours to spare. Last year his boat partner blanked but this year Mark was well supported by Ed Smith who came a comfortable second and in doing so gave them both a resounding victory in the pair’s competition. One of the primary reasons for choosing Rutland as the venue was to make access easier for anglers from North of the boarder. Disappointingly yet again no anglers from Scotland attended which rather defeats the objective. Mindful of the hike in fuel cost and the ineligibility of associates to receive any travel subsidy from public funds, I propose to stage next years Open Championships at Chew. Following the results and prize giving, well we would have had a prize giving if the trophy had been returned, two Associate members were presented with their RN Colours. Dave (Jan) Minall and John Honey both earned their Colours several years ago but through either modesty (not in Jans case) or erroneously, neither of them had received their award. It was with great pleasure that I was able to make amends for the oversight and albeit belatedly, present them both with their well deserved RN Colours as a sign of recognition for their support over the years in representing the RN. Well done lads! Finally I would like to thank all those anglers that supported this fixtures and also thank the Anglian Water staff at Rutland especially John Seaton the Senior Warden for his assistance in running the competition.