The 1,500 acre plus Lake Corbu in Constanta County, Romania was the venue for the 2012 World Carp Championships and at the draw each team of three pairs of anglers were chosen to fish in either A, B or C Sections.
For England Kev Hewitt and Mark Bartlett fished A Section, Kia Sanger and Jack Stamp B Section, with the Wildbore brothers in C. Korda Team England manager, Ian Huntingdon, was particularly pleased with an A1 draw which saw an end peg for Bartlett and Hewitt – but that was the last pleasing result for the England lads who put out several kilos of bait by throwing stick only to watch as the Romanians made the most of their inside knowledge and home advantage to storm ahead with their long range, single hookbait tactics, closely followed by a very competent-looking South African squad.
By the start of day two Romania and Bulgaria had pulled away from the chasing pack with South Africa in third and England were languishing back in 14th so the management made the decision to change tactics and try to connect with the long range fish by substituting the struggling Sanger and Stamp with the longer-casting pairing of Jamie Londors and Billy Flowers.
Sadly the plan didn’t pay off and despite the Wildebore brothers finding a few fish over the 1.5kg weight required to make the score sheet all of the England lads were being outfished, with B Section proving to be especially difficult.
By the third morning it was clear the Romanians were really caning the event with all three of their pairs doing well in their sections, having amassed a total weight in excess of 850kg and so it proved at the final whistle; the Romanians taking team and individual gold in the shape of Fasie Stefan and Roman Felix with 259 fish for a combined weight of 76.378kg from A Section.
For England it was a case of ‘lessons learned’ and a very disappointing result which saw them fail to adapt and compete effectively with local conditions and tactics despite their undoubted technical skills.
Full team results are presented below:
