The Bowmore European Fly Fishing championships, were held this September on various lochs on Scotland's Isle of Islay.

The Polish team did a clean sweep of the championships, taking both team and individual gold medals by dint of hard fishing and pulling some good pegs during the contest. The Scots were beaming with the silver medal, not least for beating the 'auld enemy' who managed to pull hard on the final stretch of the tree-day competition to win the bronze on Friday afternoon.

While the Poles and the Scots held their positions at the top from the beginning, the English team made a fantastic push from thirteenth place on Thursday.

The Poles pulled off a spectacular win. It was explained to me that they have no stillwaters over there, which makes me think these guys must be really something on their home rivers. Complete unfamilarity with the water was apparently only a minor hurdle, they just got down to it and didn't slip out of the running throughout. Clearly, these boys can fish. Bagging both the team and individual gold medals, and both Bowmore silver whisky quaiches, left no doubt as to who was the big dog in this fight.

Scots team member Bill Dewar told me that it was a close run thing all the way, pulling a poor peg and having a single blank session (as he did on Loch Gorm - a nasty and fishless lee shore weed bank) meant the team could fall behind, and fast. Staying among the front runners throughout the competition was a matter of getting a handle on things quickly, relying on experience and grim determination to make the best of some very tough conditions, and above all, avoiding a blank. There was no real 'home advantage' to speak of since these guys spend almost 100% of their time on Central Belt rainbow waters. As far as familiarity is concerned these wild Islay brownie lochs may as well have been in Iceland. From the sounds of it, since the Scottish team has no sponsors or financial backing and, unlike other national teams, don't practice together at any time during the season, they had to rely on individual angling prowess and ancient Scottish battle tactics - in other words, they charged.

John Horsey said that his England team had to get seriously focused for the final day to come from so far behind, but their superb organisation and experience as a team meant that if they got any breaks they would capitalise on them. And so they did. A clear example of how deep experience, familiarity and practice as a team will win through. Like any international level sport, other things being more or less equal, good sponsorship and organisational backing make a difference. As Horsey says, they know they are up against the best competition
anglers in the world, so while a gold medal is an achievement of the highest order, the bronze is only a matter of a trout or two, and as far as the rest of the 14 teams are concerned, in this company a loss is no shame at all.

Scots team receive their medals.

Bowmore distillers superb organisation and hospitality, and no small amount of their fabulous malt whisky, made the whole thing a pleasure. The people of Bowmore town and the entire island got right behind the event and responded with warmth and enthusiasm in the true Olympic spirit, ensuring its success. In terms of just feeling good, the visiting teams left in the knowledge that the 2003 European Fly Fishing Competition in Islay will be hard to replicate.