23 year old, unemployed, competition angler, Andy Power, from Somerton, Wilts, took the Maver Match This £50,000 winner takes all angling final held a Larford Lakes, Stourport Worcestershire, beating

23 of the UK’s top match anglers to land the catch of a lifetime.

Grant Albutt (Garbolino) finished a close second, losing a possible match winning £50,000 fish just minutes before the end, ending up instead with a smashed pole!

Andy totalled 39-780 kilos of carp and F1 hybrids while Grant finished agonisingly close with 37-100 kilos.

Andy commented “I didn’t really want to be at that end of the lake, I thought I’d got enough for fourth or fifth despite everyone telling me I’d done well and could’ve won it. I only started to believe I’d won when the scales got to the last angler to weigh in.
Andy went on to say “I simply can’t believe I’ve won it and it’ll only properly sink in when I go to a cash point and check my account balance!”.

Conditions on the day, were the complete opposite of the previous week with plenty of cloud and strong winds driving temperatures considerably lower.
With the wind proving a real challenge Andy, like many anglers, opted for a bomb and pellet approach and really attacked the peg feeding aggressively with half a dozen 8mm pellets every twenty seconds or so and casting regularly, rarely leaving the bait in the water for more than a couple of minutes. With the peg only being around eighteen inches deep, Andy’s favoured pellet waggler method was unlikely to produce the goods, although he did manage to catch one or two carp up in the water when the wind eventually subsided.

“I caught early on and apart from one half hour spell around two hours in, the fishing was pretty steady, although the average stamp of fish was quite small at around 1lb 8oz each”. Andy continued “By twitching the bait and casting all around the swim, sometimes a yard further out or to the left I didn’t wait too long for an indication and I swapped to a piece of punched polony meat when I felt I needed a better fish, which worked really well with four or five carp up to 8lbs which make a difference in any match”.

Andy finished by saying “I’ve won a few £1,000 matches before, but this is something else completely – it sounds obvious, but I’ll never have a day’s fishing like it again!”.