For the last four years my colleagues and I at Birds Tackle, Great Blakenham near Ipswich have organised and taken part in our annual carp charity match, which is held at one of the Gipping Angling Preservation Society (GAPS) waters ‘Barham B Pit’. The money raised each year is donated to Somersham Ward which is a cancer ward of Ipswich Hospital. A regular customer and good friend of ours at Birds Terry Lunn sadly lost his dear wife Jan to cancer. We now hold this match each year in Jan’s memory and with the help of donations from all our kind suppliers and support from our customers we have raised a lot of money for this worthy cause. We set ourselves a target each year of beating the previous year’s total, this year we excelled ourselves and more than doubled it. The event took place on 12th-13th May, 28 anglers gathered at the lake which GAPS kindly let us use for the 24 hour session. At 8am the pegs were drawn and 28 anglers proceeded to sort themselves out for a 10am “all in”.10am came round and we were angling, hoping to be one of the lucky one’s to to get a bend in the rod. I thought the conditions were spot on for a few carp to visit the bank, overcast and low pressure. By 11.30am the first fish was in the net, it fell to local angler Keith Mann and weighed 11lb 8oz common, not the biggest but it was definitely appreciated. The rest of the afternoon was very quiet with the odd tench and bream visiting the bank.
At 7pm we all sat on the bank tucking into cod and chips courtesy of Kevin and Stacy Bird who kindly bought and brought them directly to our swims. Lovely!!!!!!!!
So with us all fed and watered and the traps set we settled down in expectation of some action, but for some reason the carp weren’t playing ball and daylight arrived with no carp at all being caught through the night but we all had plenty of zzzzzzzz’s except Stacy Bird who unbeknown to him had his swim liberally baited with pellet and ground bait myself and terry and was up all night with bream, 13 to be exact. Did we all laugh!!
8.30am on Sunday morning and word got round of a second fish being caught, it fell to Phil Morgan who landed a pretty mirror of 18lb6oz and with only three and a half hours to go he was looking good for 1st place.
Unfortunately even with such good conditions this was the last fish caught before 12pm and we had to draw for 3rd place which was taken by Steve Mann, spawny!!
So it finished up Steve Mann with 3rd place winning a Wychwood Urban clothing bundle, Kieth Mann with 2nd place winning 3x Fox Str alarms and Phill Morgan with 1st place winning 3x Greys Prodigy carp rods.
The larger carp avoided us all this year but never mind we all enjoyed ourselves and in my eyes we were all winners as we achieved our main goal and raised £2300 for the Somesham Ward.
I would just like to say on behalf of Birds Tackle and Terry Lunn a big thanks to all the suppliers and local waters who donated prizes for the match and raffle, all the anglers who took part in the match and bought raffle tickets, Carp Addict for publicising the event and GAPS for supporting us every year and donating their beautiful water.Myself and my colleagues will go away now and think of ways to top this year, it will be a tall order but we feel it can be done.
Until next year “Tight Lines”
Kieran Davies,
Birds Tackle.

Top Left to Right
Steve Mann, Phill Morgan, Keith Mann
Bottom Left to Right
Tim Phillips, Kieran Davies, Stacy Bird