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Joe Carass reflects on a couple of successful weeks at the prolific Tunnel Barn Farm!


Tunnel Barn Farm has been somewhat of a second home for me this year. Since moving down here permanently in February I have found it to be the perfect place to frequent. Not only is the fishing good, but you are also fishing against some of the best anglers in the sport at that kind of fishing. Anglers such as Stu Palser, Pete Rice, Pete Caton, Steve Ringer and Paul Newell to name a few all go there regularly and as you can imagine it can be a tough nut to crack!

I love a challenge though and set about trying to suss this place out.

It has been a bit kind to me this year and I have picked up on most occasions that I have been there including plenty of top three finishes. But it is the winter league that is the main event there and the one that everyone wants to win.

Last year our Match Fishing Drawbags team, that consisted of Steve Ringer, Jon Arthur, Lee Kerry and myself finished in third place out of 21 teams. Not too bad you might think? Well we were a bit gutted. Steve did what Steve does and won the league individually, Jon also performed consistently while Lee and myself were left with mediocre results. My campaign was very up and down, in the matches before xmas I did awful (mainly due to some very poor draws I may add) and then after xmas things picked up a bit and I got some decent results for the team. However I wasn’t satisfied and couldn’t wait to get back on it this winter.

I learnt a lot though, this venue is a cruel mistress at times and the anglers who have it sorted do unbelievably well there. It is all about getting in tune with the place and making good decisions at the right time. I was way off the pace last year and vowed not to let it happen again.

So this year I have fished there on every occasion that I could. For the first few weeks of October I went for a couple of recce visits. The first saw me draw Extension Peg 29.

This is my favourite lake on the complex by far and the peg wasn’t bad either. I had a simple match swapping between lines to take 106lb for second in the match. The week after I once again drew on Extension, Peg 23 to be precise. I ran to the peg as it is one of the better pegs but I got it wrong in the early stages of the match, which left me with too much to do. I ended with 79lb, which wasn’t enough to win a prize. That man Stu Palser won the lake with 98lb, a great performance from an average Peg 13.

Come the winter league on the following week though and I was raring to go. Unfortunately Lee couldn’t fish the league this year, but we had got a suitable replacement in Paul Bick.

Paul was to be chief drawing arm and he did us proud! The match tends to be dominated by anglers on the Club pool and we had two anglers on there! Jon Arthur and myself! I was to be on Peg 3, not a particularly good draw in the section but there are far worse draws! My section was split with the Top pool and my draw gave me a great chance of a top five in section. The sections in this league are 18 anglers in size so a good score is a top five.

I have been on the peg before and know that it is very snaggy across. It has a large tree on the island and the roots of it go into the water. The barbel definitely live in the roots but they can be a nightmare to get out!

I decided on a simple match, maggots down the edge, pellets down the middle and maggots across. I set off down the middle with pellets and actually had six fish in the first five minutes, I know this because my girlfriend’s nephew came with me and he set me a ‘fish every five minutes’ challenge. I think he was a bit gob smacked with the start!

It was not as hectic as that for the rest of the first hour but it was very good and I was soon up to 20 fish. I kept going for another hour before having my first look across. Just as before the barbel were a nightmare, as soon as I hooked them they were in the roots so I beefed up to 13H elastic and pulled… hard! This did the trick and I soon had them lined up along with some small F1s.

In the last hour I switched to the margins and that was solid too! It was a small F1 a bung and I came off the bank very satisfied with my performance. I knew I wouldn’t beat Craig Elkin on Peg 1 who had fished a great match and caught some cracking mirrors amongst his smaller F1s. however I was well pleased with second place with 96lb! Craig won the section with 107lb with Mark Pollard in third with 90lb.

I was well happy and was even more so when I heard how the team had done, Steve won his section from a difficult New pool with 44lb, Jon had come third with 104lb whilst Captain Bick came seventh with 82lb. this left us second on the day behind team Barston (Craig Elkin, Andy Bennett, Paul Yates and Pete Rice) who had a staggering five points!

It was a great start for us and one that we can now look to improve on! Roll on the next round.

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