An ad featured in the program, Dave Thomas of course went on to win the individual title!!
1981 World Championships
Stratford upon Avon AA hosted the 1981 Angling World Championships at Manor farm Luddington in July of that year, match fishing was huge in the 80's and if you were 13 and crazy about fishing and it was happening on your local stretch of river it was a big deal !
It seems crazy to think how popular match fishing was on rivers back in the 80s, in Stratford Upon Avon we were lucky enough to host the world angling championships just a mile or so up the road in the village of Luddington on Stratford Angling associations Manor Farm water. It was September and the England team had been practicing at the venue Monday to Thursday; more or less from the start of the 81 season, throughout the summer there were appearances by competitors from many competing nations at both club and open matches which was exciting and in the last Stratford open match on the venue the week before the championships, Stan Smith had the entire England squad compete. One of the great thing about our sport is anyone can take on the best and stand a fair chance of competing particularly on your home water, and sure enough it was Stratford's own Dave Evason who won the match earning him considerable kudos and the headline 'Teacher Canes the Stars' in the angling press.
One thing that was apparent during Septembers practice sessions was that the concept of throwing a lot of ground bait in at the start of the match was going to be a tactic used by some if not all of the continental teams and sure enough, on the team day we all watched in amazement as a ton of black cannonballs hit the water, after that match i believe there was a big push toward using bloodworm, i certainly tried unsuccessfully and expensively to mimic what i had seen over the weekend from the French but never had much joy with it, despite the extensive use and popularity of the pole on the Warwickshire Avon. I'm still not convinced it outguns the stick float on the majority of waters and certainly not the waggler where you have some far bank features.
No English angler had won a world championship on home soil until Dave Thomas landed 3lb plus of fish from a coloured and swollen river Avon left unrecognisable from the day before by a deluge of rain overnight but at Manor Farm on the last day of the 1981 world championships Dave joined Ian Heaps who had won in Poland in 1975 and previous winners Robin Harris and the legendary Billy Lane as world champion !
On the first day of the championships there were high hopes of an England team victory although the French team were fancied along with the Italians, the heavy rain on the Friday did the England team no favours with Jean Pierre Fougeat, who had won the championships 3 years earlier viewed as favourite by the angling press, I spent sometime behind him over the weekend, the ground bait bombardment and use of soils was unknown to me, the opposite to how I would have fished at the time, probably still is for the most part but it was fascinating to watch, France won the team event with England coming a dejected second, Dave Thomas saved the weekend for all of the soggy muddy English spectators on the Sunday.
An unhappy looking 2nd place England, amazing collection of anglers from the left, John Dean (stickfloat genius !), Tony Scott, Stan Smith, Clive Smith, Dave Thomas, Max Winters, Kevin Ashurst.
A member of the winning French side in action (might be Feugeot on Peg 5 .. someone correct me if im wrong !)
To get to the spot where he won the title you would need to get down to the 4th meadow and fish around where the current peg 9 is situated, for maximum authenticity you will need to wait for the river to be 3 feet up and plaster yourself in mud !
