David Corcoran (pictured) from Edinburgh was Scotland’s second top angler in the 68th world coarse angling championships in Croatia, but the Tartan team finished a disappointing 26th out of 33 nations.
Corcoran finished in 100th position out of 179 anglers with James Dornom from Currie in 117th position. James Woodrow from Cumbernauld proved Scotland’s top angler, finishing 88th, with David McAuley from Wishaw 102nd and Colin Hart from Coatbridge finished in 143rd place.
The two-day match on the River Drava was won by Serbia with Italy second and the Czech Republic third and local knowledge played a major part in the outcome.
The match was split into two areas because of low water levels with one section 40km from the other.
Gus Brindle, Scotland’s Dunfermline-based team manager, admitted that the Scots had been “caught out ” by the smart tactics of “local” teams who did not show their hand in the five days of practice.
They only brought out their bolo rods – short for Bolognese – when the match started and bolo fishing is a technique which combines using a specialised long rod and float.
The opposition were, he said, fishing at length and feeding fish balls of groundbait. Brindle said that this enabled them to catch more quickly while fishermen using waggler and slider tactics had to wait for their float to settle.
The Scots, he added, had targeted catfish, but the size of the fish being landed got smaller as the contest went on.
Brindle admitted: “We could have used too much joker (an insect lavre similar to bloodworm) into our top-up balls and that brought smaller catfish and bottle top skimmers into the peg.
“Once they are in they are really difficult to get through to the bottom to target the better fish.”
Corcoran, he said, did really well on Day One, catching over 300 small fish for a fifth place in his section, a really good result as he had Serbia, Poland and the Czech Republic in his group, some of the best teams in the event.
Brindle added: “In the D and E section we got really caught out, as did a lot of the other teams, as the locals set up their bolo rods and they fished them at 20 metres. throwing balls of groundbait and catching catfish.
“It is much quicker to fish that way as it settles much quicker and you can get the fish hooked and back in in the time it takes a waggler (float) or slider to settle.
“We did not see any teams practice it at all (in practice) and it was a bit of a surprise. We did get caught out as did a lot of the Home Nations.”
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