The Daiwa Team England Ladies returned from the eighth World Angling Championships in Croatia with team silver and individual silver and bronze.

In a thrilling last day two England stars were pipped for the coveted crown on weight.

The England ladies had collected just 16 penalty points at the end of day one with superb section-winning performances from Wendy Locker, Sandra Scotthorne and Wendy Lithgoe.

The highly fancied French side led by a single point after recording two section wins, two seconds and a third.

The 600-acre Akumulation Lake proved to be an excellent venue with vast shoals of skimmers, bleak and catfish providing the action.

With temperatures soaring into the high 90s on day two the England team chose to repeat their long pole and worm tactics in search of the quality skimmers.

Their Gallic rivals stuck with a small fish approach whipping out hundreds of bleak. Locker and Scotthorne continued where they left off with both scoring back to back section wins.

The team total of just 14 points on day two would normally be enough for victory but the French spoiled the party recording the same total for team gold.

To make matters worse Isabelle Hawkyauk scored a second section win and took the individual gold thanks to her combined weight of 14.550kilogrammes.

Wendy Locker added a silver to her collection of medals with her total of 13.206kg edging out Barnsley lass Scotthorne, who totalled 10.584kg.

Local anglers enjoyed some superb stillwater sport over the Bank Holiday break with plenty of rod-bending, net- bulging action.

The Woodlands complex is certainly worth a visit with floating baits sorting out the better carp if the ducks will allow. I think a ten out of ten rating could be in order for the ten lake Carlton Minniott complex.

Simon Cramner-Gordon at Paradise Fishery, Melbourne, took time off from coaching and bailiffing duties to catch some fine tench from pond one this week.

He reports that rudd, tench and crucians are all falling freely to double maggot fished tight to the lily pads, the islands or the bank. Constant loose feed seems to attract their attention and continuous feeding leads to the swim building nicely. Carp to nearly double figures have been taken on meat and various flavours of pellet.

Despite the low water levels pond two is on top form. Don't be afraid to fish close in. Three sections of pole is ample.

Just make sure that you are ready to ship more sections on as the carp have allegedly been crossed with rottweillers.

Again the humble maggot is scoring well and is accounting for fine catches of carp, skimmers, rudd and roach. Last weekend's match fished on pond two by Barlow AC was won with a mixed bag of 36.5lb.

At Raker Lakes bags to 75lb of carp have been taken on pole fished meat from Horseshoe Lake.

Try cupping in small amounts of liquidized meat and fishing punched meat on the hook. Floating bread is also scoring with bigger fish to double figures, pegs 14 to 30 seem to be outscoring the lower numbers.

Roach to over 2lb are coming out of Heron pond.

The weekend match action sees the CIU Saturday League back at Park View with Shepherds heading to Poppleton where roach are starting to feed.

On Sunday Cygnet visit the busy Park View, White Rose are at Poppleton while the waters below the city are tackled by Huntington on the Donkeywoods with Burton Stone and BRS at Fulford and Palace Ings.

Match bookings for September 8-9 are: Saturday: Poppleton - GPO, Donkeywoods - Transco, Fulford - Local Ac; Sunday: Park View - City Arms and New Earswick, Poppleton YAA , Donkeywoods - Ben Johnson Fulford and Palace Ings - CIU Acaster - Royal Oak.

There will be no angling reports in the Evening Press next week because of holidays but clubs should still send in results for publication.

Updated: 12:26 Friday, August 31, 2001