Team UKMA Profile

Darren Wilson

I have been an angler of some type for almost 30 years now, first cutting my teeth and concentrating in match fishing on the Fen drains and rivers, including specimen angling on the numerous stillwaters that populate the Cambridgeshire countryside, before making the change to specimen angling totally about 7 or 8 years ago due to health reasons. During my match fishing career I fished for teams such as Ouse Valley Match Group, Cambs Federation and Dick Clegg Mark One Sensas, learning personally from anglers such as Amer Jawad, Ian Heaps and Bob Nudd over the years.

I love nothing more than fishing small, intimate venues that are tricky with old wary fish, but will fish any size water and not give up until I have reached my targets set. Size of fish does not matter to me as long as each fish has been worked hard for. Juggling married life and health issues, I am far from a “time bandit” and prefer to concentrate on short sessions rather than spend many days on the bank at a time. In fact, due to my OCD with how fish look rather than the size of them, my PB Carp has been stuck at 26lb 8oz since 1993, which came from the Woolpack Fishery Lake 5/6.

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I have another obsession with needing to know the “ins & outs” of how a rig, lead system or  other item of tackle or bait works, which can be a drawback at times when keeping things simple might have put a fish or two on the bank.

I have fished for and caught specimen fish of other species over the years with PB’s including Roach of 2lb 15oz (Woolpack Lake 2), Tench of 8lb 14oz (male fish from Hinchingbrooke Country Park) , Bream of 9lb 15oz (Hinchingbrooke Country Park) , Pike of 21lb 1oz (Gt. Ouse) and Chub of 5lb 4oz (Gt. Ouse).

My target water for the foreseeable future is a small, five swim, spring fed pool in the Warwickshire countryside that holds some stunning looking old Carp to low thirties, and the campaign got off to a great start with two fish (19lb 10oz & 21lb 5oz) being placed on the unhooking mat within the first 5 hours of the start.