As an ambassador and huge supporter of junior angling, I have always been active in helping encourage youngsters to access fishing from a very early age. For me, like many, when I look back to the days when I started out, I can clearly remember who it was who actually helped me.
With this, I’m always keen to take the chance to offer any youngster a golden opportunity to get started. This week as I was personally approached by a young angler who was clearly keen to get into match fishing. I addressed the matter immediately by contacting Paul Lucas at the Moat House Angling Academy based at St Helens.
As a very keen angler himself, Paul’s dedication to promote junior inclusion projects within angling saw him jump at the opportunity help me and give our youngster some valuable assistance. As arrangements were made for the young angler to join the academy on the bank next week, after a call they also jumped at the chance to slot into the development team.
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Moathouse were competing in the Angling Trust Junior Youth National at Tunnel Barn Farm in Coventry on Saturday. This competition, following the academy’s debut 2022 National, with their first junior team, this year saw them putting two youth teams and a junior team into the competition which was a massive step forward for the club.
It has to be said that without the support of coaches, parents and the anglers being fully committed to the cause, this simply would not have happened and with everyone very excited as would be expected, those participating certainly didn’t disappoint.
With match plan carefully formulated by Sarah Taylor and Kristian Jones, with the superb bait supplied by sponsors Harry’s tackle, Wigan and Parkfield Angling on the Wirral, Bait-Tec and SCR Autos, a carefully planned team approach led to everyone using a chopped worm and caster shallow tactic.
With the juniors split over three pools and the youth teams on six lakes on the complex, the team captains completed the team’s draw at 9am in professional style with everyone going to their pegs to get ready for the 11am all in. Weather wise, although it stayed dry, the wind unfortunately played havoc at times, which made for some difficult fishing on some lakes. But, the teams stayed positive and worked tirelessly right up to the all out at 4pm.
After a long wait, the results were finally shared and the junior team came seventh with a notable solid performance by Jenson Swain, who won his section. Ramsbottom took gold with 25 points, the Moathouse blue team took the silver medal, missing out on gold by just one point. In Paul’s words, it was amazing to see Harry Matthews, Ryan Jones, Alex Glover, Will Wright, Joe Farley and Euan Luke stepping up to receive their medals.
