Caption: Ali Hamidi – highly critical of the venue selection for the 2013 World Carp Championships.

The official World Carp Championships has come in for some stick for the second year running.

In 2012 many of the teams found out too late that the carp in Romania’s Lac Corbu had been pre-conditioned to feed at certain distances and on a bait that many of them didn’t have. This year the event moved to Portugal’s Lake Montargil.

The problem here is that the venue is full of carp that are too small to be weighed in – the minimum size you can weigh in under FIPS regulations is 1.5kg.

Most teams found themselves returning one under-sized fish after another. One pairing caught 60 fish, and not one of them counted! As in Romania, the home nation dominated, with Croatia taking silver and Kazakhstan the bronze medal. Korda Team England were tenth and multiple world champions South Africa last!

Korda’s Ali Hamidi said: “The venue was more about pot luck that skill, not what you want at the official Carp World Championships. This was an atrocious venue selection by FIPS. As a major sponsor we want the event to grow, not become a global joke.”

Ironically the event returns to Romania in 2014 and it has already been proposed that every nation uses the same bait.