This was EFSA England's first visit to fish for Cod in the Mersey . The organisation had been a bit of a nightmare with many of the hotels being booked as Liverpool were at home. We eventually found a HQ hotel in Birkenhead in which most of us stayed. A big thank you to Rod Adamson and Tony Parry for all there help in sorting out accommodation and organising the bait.

The weather conditions were really against us with force 7-8 North-westerly winds on the Saturday which delayed the start to 11am but at least it gave us 4 hours fishing.

Fishing proved hard with the amount of fresh water in the Mersey keeping the fish in the deeper shipping channels. After the first day Neil Cottington had a well-deserved lead after fishing in difficult conditions.

Thanks to Rod for the tour of Liverpool on Saturday Night and I'm sure the "Angels" photo will turn up somewhere!

The following day was a 6 am start with the conditions much better. It was good to see some of the boats catching plenty of cod with the top boat catching 42 amongst 6 anglers.

The day 2 winner was Ash (where's my Fags) Currier who caught 13 cod for 489pts.

If the conditions had of been better, I'm sure we would have seen double the amount of cod that were actually caught.

The overall winner was Ash Currier who had a great score of 604 - nearly 200 pts ahead of second place - so well done Ash in becoming our 2006 English Cod Champion.

It was a great weekend and I would like to return again, but get the HQ booked early on the Liverpool Dock Side and make it bait supplied competition.

The only disappointing thing was the lack of support from some of the members from the Northwest who have been very vocal in the past for not holding events up North!