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Match Fishing’s Joe Carass talks about the first round of the prestigious UK Champs!


This year has seen me enter the UK Champs for the first time in my angling career. It has been an event that I have long admired but until this year have never really had the time to fish it. My angling has changed somewhat in the last 12 months and I needed something to really get my teeth stuck into and this seemed to be the perfect competition to get involved in.

The first round was to be at the fantastic Lindholme Lakes nr Doncaster. This is a venue that although I haven’t fished much in the last 18 months, is a venue that I know very well. It is also a venue that I have done well at in the past so it was perfect. After making a few phone calls to the regulars it seemed to me that worms would be the safest bet and doing a feature on the venue the day before with Alan Scotthorne confirmed this for me.

Come the day and I must admit to having a few butterflies in my stomach. This is the one that they all want to win and if you take a look down the previous winners list you will soon see why. I was praying for a good draw to kick off my campaign and when Peg 2 on Bonsai stuck to my mitt I was quietly confident of getting a good result. The section was tough though as last year’s winner Jason LeBosquet was on the flyer Peg 74, I would need a perfect match to beat him.

Peg 2 is a nice little peg that has lots of options, the wind was also blowing into my peg which I was sure would send a few fish my way. I had an island at about 15metres but upon plumbing up I couldn’t find any shallow water. I did have a fairly level spot that was three feet, which made the best of a bad situation. For this line I set up a 4x14 PB Carp 4 on 0.11mm mainline to a 0.10mm hooklength and size 16 Kamasan B911. I also set up a heavier 4x16 version of the same float in case the liners were an issue.

I felt this line would produce most of my fish but I had two very nice looking margin swims. To my left was a spare peg that was the only place in the peg that I could find two feet of water tight to the bank. I decided to feed meat here in the hope of a few barbell and bigger carp in the last hour. To my right was a long margin but the shallowest water I could find here was 4ft, which I didn’t fancy one bit. Nevertheless I primed it with chopped worms in the hope that I could maybe catch here a little earlier than the left hand edge should my island swim dry up.

I also set up rigs for open water but never really expected to need them. Once I plumbed up and found the rather deep water near the island, I had to think hard about how I would feed my worms. I always like to feed them quite wet with a lot of soil but given the depth I felt that this would lead to too many liners. A quick route through my bait bag and I came up with a concoction. I chopped up half a kilo of washed worms into a fine pulp. To this I added two pints of casters, a tin of Frenzied Hemp, a tin of corn, two pints of fine soil and finally two pints of dried 2mm fishery pellets. Once the pellets and soil soaked up the moisture from the worms, corn and hemp it formed a lovely sticky mix that I could feed in small balls that would go straight to the bottom and keep the fish where I wanted them.

At the start I cupped in half a pot of 6mm meat to the left edge, a full 250ml pot of the worm mix to my right hand edge and then simply filled my small Cad pot up with the mix for across to the island. Action was instant as the small newly stocked F1s were there in numbers and my mix was keeping them right where I wanted them. They were not a bad stamp and luckily I was catching the odd bigger 2lb F1 to keep bumping my weight up.

My match went perfectly for three hours and I had literally caught an F1 every chuck in! However it was beginning to slow so I had my first look to my right down the edge. There were a few fish there and it gave my island swim a rest but it was just too deep and I missed too many bites for it to be a good line.

Luckily my island swim was good again and I caught well again. With this event being filmed by Sky Sports there seemed to be a lot of focus on Jason, which led me to believe that he was bagging! With this in mind I decided that with 45 minutes to go I would have a look down the edge to my left.

First chuck on this swim saw me land a 4lb mirror followed by several F1s and a couple of quality barbel. I foul hooked a few fish, which seemed to unsettle the swim and with just 10 minutes to go I didn’t fancy going back to the island. I changed to fishing a full worm on the hook, which gave me three more barbel, and one minute before time saw me hook another. I landed the fish and it was another 3lb barbel and a lovely end to my match.

I had, had a brilliant match and was happy that I would probably end up second in section behind Jason. I was first to weigh in and was pleased with my 56kg total, which consisted of 90+ fish. I was the best weight on the lake right the way around until the scales arrived at Jason’s peg. He was admitting to 150lb so after two weighs it was looking as though he would need a big second net to beat me. As soon as he lifted the net out though I knew it was going to be extremely close! His four weighs totaled 53kg, which wasn’t enough to beat me! I was jumping for joy inside but was trying to keep a straight face!

It wasn’t enough to make the main frame as I ended up fifth but I was more than pleased with the perfect start to the UK Champs!

Follow Joe on Twitter @carassjoe