Intro to how it all started and where it is all going.

Hello and welcome to the site. The object of this site is to give an insight into match fishing at club level. For those considering a new challenge and for those already giving it a go. The reason I refer to club match fishing is its a big step to take from club level to open match competitions, the obvious one being the expense and the other is the time needed to practice and prepare. I have heard it said many times you need lots of bait, top of the range tackle, and of course, I'll just be pools fodder. All of this I find untrue at club level. These concerns may be true on open match competition, more so now especially on commercial waters ware peg fee,s are high and you have to use there bait whereas back in my day 1980s it was all rivers and canals. I was top of my game back then winning some of the top open matches as well as fishing team matches such as division one nationals, major winter leagues, and so on but to be fair I also had some sponsorship which helped a lot. But like most of the yesteryear and today's match men, I started at club level.

I stopped fishing altogether in 1993 as commercial waters completely took over the match scene and that was not really for me and I never picked up another rod till 2012 when my partner Jen wanted to try fishing out just for pleasure. It was not long before Jen got really into fishing and wanted more, after listening to my match day stories and looking at my old scrapbooks. So with this in mind we joined a local club who have there waters just ten minutes drive from where we live, you can't really call it a commercial but a good head of carp and club matches are run most weekends with a very reasonable membership fee ideal to practice on and that really is how it started.

In the coming months Jen and I hope to give you an insight into competing at club level as well as the match day reports, and information on the fisheries we go to, methods we find best and our progress that we will record in the Blog along with links to fishery websites and how to find them.