No F1 carp or fancy 16m poles. Nice to see.

Real fishing. The good old days. How I wish that I could go back in time.

fishing a stick float with a 13ft rod and an ABU closed face reel will never go out of fashion

We used to go to the Trent, Ouse, and Idle matches with our fishing club in the late '70s and '80s, and we used to have 2 coaches running and 2 vans to transport anglers and their tackle if they drew a peg far away and there was access.
We used to set off in the early morning, about 4am, despite the river being no more than a 40-minute run, on a regular day.
But these match days used to jam up the small B roads on the way to the river with coaches; sometimes it would take over an hour to get there, and that was with us getting out of the coach when the traffic was jammed and walking to the river for the last 30 minutes.
The organisation was like a well-oiled machine.
Coming home with a section win, which I achieved a couple of times, was a wonderful thing.
People would still be asking about the win a month later, and you got your name in the Angling Times.
The golden era of match fishing!

Golden days of match fishing, big competitions , with competitors on a more even playing field. 13ft rod and a reel. No £500 boxes or £2,000 poles

The old abu 506 is still one of the best float fishing reels for rivers,those old glass fibreglass rods must have weighed a ton with hardly any bend in them.
But wow to be able to fish a river using 3lb line straight to size 14 hook and catch 50,60,70lb of roach,i only wish rivers like that still existed.

My Father fished in that match and caught the biggest fish. It's weird seeing him twenty years younger than I am now. All I remember about it was that he came back with thousands and thousands of embassy cigarettes. He didn't smoke and gave them all away.

Smoking and Fishing....my two favourite things

Can't mistake the grating gears of a Mitchell reel.

Brilliant video the good old days ,better than now times

Chris  love is  a  fantastic   angler  I  saw  him  fishing  when  I  was  16  years  old  on  the  river  thames  at  richmond  an  absolute  joy  too  watch ...

Good old times when they used to hand out a bottle of beer 3:37

Love the old Abu closed face reels still take some beating on rivers  looks like they were the state of the art then and still good now , lovely film no long poles then lol

Remember when we were alive...wonderful video

I fished to get into the regional final that year, only just failing to qualify, only to discover that I was under age and wouldn't have been allowed!!!

Good to see think it was on world of sport on a Saturday afternoon good to hear the drone of a Mitchel match and my old favourite Abu 506 reel great memories

Phoenix nights meets fishing at start😂 Bloody hell, I was 13 then and in awe of some of the names here, how times have changed with gear, but this was the sort of fishing I was brought up on, trotting a stick down a glide. Good to see though.

How cool is it to find this video here. I spent the Monday evening after the win with Chris, Ray Mumford and Ken Collings celebrating his win at Molesey Thamesiders In Kingston...............

Great stuff!! Simple days. Incredible how much match angling changed in the following decade. Micromesh keepnets, feeder fishing, carbon poles, continental seat boxes etc. Mitchell reels and ABU 506s have certainly stood the test of time though.

The great Ken Giles 👌