Match & Coarse

Coarse Fishing

Carp.com was created in 1995 and has witnessed a massive change in how anglers coarse fish for Carp and silverfish. (Silver fish is a term used for species other than Carp, such as Roach, Bream, Perch and Rudd.)

Fishing techniques have changed significantly, whether using a running line float, whip, pole, or method feeder rod. Coarse fishing tackle has evolved with next-generation space-age seat boxes, advanced fishing chairs and improved umbrella designs. Angler's targets have also changed, with many fishing for mega weights of match-sized Carp, while others concentrate on more refined specimen silver fish tactics. Some coarse anglers use multiple rods, while others prefer a single-minded approach, whether with a rod or a pole.

What Type of Gear is Required for Coarse Fishing?

Float Fishing Rods, Method Fishing Rods, Fishing Whips, Poles, Reel Lines, and Rigs for coarse fishing. Leading tackle companies have revolutionised coarse and match fishing, creating pronounced fishing styles in both the United Kingdom and Europe. However, brands like Guru, Preston, and Matrix have matured from a modest beginning nowhere to rival long-established fishing giants like Shimano and Daiwa.

Developing methods and pellet waggler rods within coarse fishing has widened many anglers' approaches, making it easier for everyone to catch much more fish, particularly in commercial fisheries. On the other hand, coarse anglers love to whip and pole fishing, which has become a huge category. Advanced seat boxes are popular for these styles, with footrests and adjustable legs for better comfort, regardless of the terrain.

Trying to beat the weight of their personal best fish is one aim coarse anglers like to have, but as many prefer catching all day and gauging their success by their total weight at the end of each session. Nash Tackle leads the way with 10ft carp rods, with Fox, Wolf, Shimano and Daiwa also producing superb shorter-length versions, which anglers can catch Carp and other species with. In coarse fishing, some people now prefer short rods, while more traditional anglers remain attached to conventional 12ft and 13ft lengths, both for float and feeder methods.

Coarse Fishing Bait & Liquids; Additives

Bait is critical in coarse and match fishing. Current leading brands are Sonu Baits, Bait-Tech, and Sticky Baits. The aim is to encourage Carp, bream, tench and other species to feed. Coarse and match anglers use various fishing baits to do this, including maggots, casters, pinkies, worms, ground bait, pellets and particles.

Flavours and additives are often added to create enticing smells and aromas, to attract and hold even more fish in a swim. Another significant change is that more fishing bait is being bought online, with coarse anglers moving strongly towards shelf-life products like fishing boilies, tinned hemp, pellets, wafters and pop-ups, similar to those used by carp anglers.

Coarse Fishing Tackle, Fishing Nets, Scales, and Keep Nets

Coarse anglers need a landing net for small to medium-sized fish like Bream, Roach and Perch, but also something large enough to land bigger-sized specimens like Carp. In pleasure and match fishing, anglers like to catch Carp alongside other species to increase their overall weight for the day. Carp often dominate the majority of the biggest match-winning weight or at least makes all the difference between winning or losing. These fish put the gloss on a good pleasure fishing day too. Coarse anglers are now encouraged to take an unhooking mat for Carp on most fisheries, as they never know what size fish will turn up. In addition, weigh slings, and digital scales are used more in this category to determine the exact weight of catches or the size of potential personal best fish.

Many coarse anglers retain their catches in keepnets when allowed, weighing or assessing the contents at the end of each session before returning the fish. Like in carp circles, devoted coarse anglers who use similar tactics increasingly use fish care products like medical kits - to treat any wounds found on fish they catch. Fish Care Kits include antiseptic creams and liquids to apply to the fish's mouth or any other damaged area before carefully placing the catch back in the water to catch it again.

Coarse Bite Alarms

In the early days of coarse fishing, it was customary to use a simple bobbin on the line to show any interest or take from fish picking up the hook bait. However, electronic bite alarms created by Wolf, Fox, Delkim and Sonik have now sold in their millions, improving bite detection dramatically. As a result, coarse anglers now commonly use these audio and visual indicators too.

Fishing Seat Boxes, Umbrellas, Fishing Rests, Bank Sticks

Some coarse anglers similarly use fishing chairs to carp anglers, making for a more relaxing time on the bank. Many others opt for fishing seat box, which has been completely revolutionised over the last two decades. Seat boxes can be turned into complete fishing stations, adding accessories like bump bars, feeder arms and side trays. Some coarse anglers still use basic rod rests and bank sticks for their rod and line fishing, while match-orientated anglers rely more on pole rollers, pole roosts and other advanced coarse fishing tackle accessories. All these anglers will use an umbrella, but it is more likely to be a basic, lightweight design rather than a carp-style shelter or bivvy.

Fishing Trollies; Barrows

Like carp anglers, coarse anglers who take the coarse fishing route seriously carry much more gear these days. It's preferable to get everything to a swim in one trip to maximise fishing time, so match trollies and barrows are now very popular in this branch of the sport too. Two and four-wheelbarrows, or space shuttles as they are often called, are massive sellers.

Coarse Fishing Near Me

Fisheries dedicated to coarse fishing have become a massive market across the UK and Europe. It's easy to find day ticket fisheries where you pay to fish on each visit, or you can purchase a season ticket if you intend to be a regular. Coarse fishing is big in France, Germany, Denmark and Holland, where UK coarse anglers often go for holidays or participate in festivals, catching mega hauls of species like bream and roach.

When looking for potential venues, you can use Google and the Internet, but why not check out the carp.com forum, where you will find thousands of posts about fisheries worldwide? So much help is available to carp and coarse anglers on this website.

When is the Best Time to Go Coarse Fishing?

Spring

The coarse fishing season ramps across Europe from April because spring is when the weather improves and gets warmer. As water temperatures increase, fish become more active, encouraging anglers to enjoy and match fishing more regularly. The coarse fishing close season is fine on many waters. Most fisheries are open all year round, the only exception being rivers, drains and some canals connected to flowing water. These venues are closed to angling from the 15th of March until the 15th of June inclusive. Something else you should always remember is to purchase a rod license. Otherwise, you risk getting a heavy fine wherever you end up fishing.

Summer

As temperatures keep on rising, fish become even more active and catches for coarse anglers reach their highest point. Many use polarised fishing sunglasses, which are great for fish spotting and, for your eyes, cutting out glare. But, again, fish location is key to success, searching out features and signs of fish moving, on or just below the surface.

Autumn

Coarse fishing in autumn starts to slow down, although dedicated anglers, especially in match fishing, regularly go out. Many switch to rivers and target barbel or chub when the weather cools down, although the carp bagging pools stay busy.

Winter

Coarse fishing in winter can still be enjoyable, but you need the right fishing clothing and equipment. In addition, techniques have to be changed to keep catching lots of fish, using lighter tackle and less bait to encourage plenty of bites.

More About Coarse Fishing

Carp.com has a carp forum with over 328,000+ posts covering everything you need to know about Carp and coarse fishing. You might even find new friends to go angling with among the 101,000+ members.

Important Things to Consider When Coarse Fishing

1. Some coarse anglers do branch out into using carp rods with 2lb to 3lb test curves, along with baitrunner or big pit reels. But most use method feeders, pellet wagglers, quivertips and traditional longer float rods. Pole and whip fishing is also very popular.
2. Anglers who float fish rely on longer 13ft to 15ft rods for fishing deep or running water, switching to shorter 10ft to 12ft pellet waggler style designs for bagging Carp in shallow water. Poles are used everywhere but are particularly popular on canals, drains and snake lakes.
3. Coarse anglers prefer front drag reels, mainly sizes ranging from 3000 to 5000, which are small to medium gauges. Smaller reels suit shorter rods and fishing closer, while bigger models - with larger spool diameters are better for longer rods and casting greater distances.
4. Popular reels lines for float fishing range between 3lbs and 5lbs, moving from 6lbs to 10lbs for feeder fishing.
5. The most used baits for coarse fishing are maggots, casters, worms, pellets, sweetcorn and bread. Groundbait is used a lot, too, and many choices are aimed at venue types and different species. Long-term favourite baits like luncheon, paste, hemp, tares and prawns also work.

Other Items Coarse Anglers Use Catapults

Catapults in coarse fishing include light pole-orientated designs for leaking out small amounts of bait like pinkies, maggots, casters and hemp. Medium power catties are used for firing similar baits further, along with pellets of various sizes.

Then there are more brute force designs that propel free offerings to maximum distances, useful when using waggler or leger rigs at long range. Finally, there are groundbait catapults with various cup designs and elastic strengths for getting balls of groundbait out over short, medium and extreme distances.

Terminal Tackle

Coarse anglers use smaller hooks and finer lines than those who purely carp fish. It's all about conjuring bites first and worrying about landing big fish once they have been hooked. More forgiving action rods help to redress the balance, as does the use of elastic inside the top kits of poles. Pole elastic has a superb cushioning effect when big fish are hooked on light tackle. There are many small tackle bits and pieces coarse anglers use, including lots of split shot sizes, a huge variety of hook patterns, swivels, connector beads, and pole fishing weights called olivettes. Float choice for running line and pole rigs is massive, covering many fishing situations and targeting different species.

Rod Rests

The basic rod can support rods and allow coarse anglers to relax while fishing, but for many who like to keep busy, a rod goes to rest while they re-bait or unhook a fish. Rod rest heads have standard screw threads that fit all bank sticks and feeder arms. Feeder's arms clamp onto the seat box and chair legs, allowing better angle, length and height adjustments. These take all rod rests, including more intricate designs like feeder rests, which offer multi-rod positions or line channels. These allow feeder anglers to tweak the rod's positioning to tighten up or slacken the line when quivertip fishing.

Fishing Unhooking Mats

Coarse anglers use unhooking mats, mostly on venues that hold sizeable Carp, because fishery owners stipulate they must be used for fish safety. These waterproof mats are handy for placing fish on while weighing in at the end of sessions and for taking catch shots.

Fishing Chairs

Many coarse anglers use fishing seat boxes, but quite a few still opt for fishing chairs or seats. There are basic designs but also clever models with extra useful accessories like bait trays, feeder arms and other clamps on metalware.

Most importantly, most have adjustable legs to get comfy over awkward, uneven terrain. The coarse category involves many diverse methods. The match aspect often spills over into pleasure fishing, where anglers use similar tactics to bag up on fish-filled venues. It can be about big or small fish, whatever floats your boat. Some like sitting it out for species like large Carp, Bream, Barbel and Chub, while others are happy just getting bites all day and putting together goods weights of smaller silver fish.

Specialist fishing refers to anglers becoming experts in their field, whether Carp, specimen, match, barbel or just pleasure. Carp.com covers all these angling styles, regardless of your chosen path.

On our website, no matter what your level of fishing, we have rods and specialist reels that suit serious angling - whatever your target species or method of catching them. You can get the best fishing tackle from us to make your sport even more enjoyable and successful. If you search the carp.com forum, we have information on all the best fishing waters near you. There are 328,000+ forum posts covering everything from where to fish and what baits to use, coming from thousands of anglers around the UK and Europe.

If, for instance, your area of interest is Barbel fishing, we have Barbel rods and barbel rigs; whatever barbel setup you need, we can help. We stock Daiwa, Shimano and Korum for the best barbel fishing rods. In addition, some anglers specialise in catching huge bream and Tench, viewed as trophy fish in the same way as specimen barbel and Carp. We can help in these areas yet again.

Specialist anglers will be used to buying tackle from Korda, Fox, Drennan and Nash. In addition, Daiwa produces some unique feeders and barbel rods. So, we have products from all these leading tackle manufacturers, alongside top bait companies like Mainline, Sticky Baits and Nash Baits. The latter covers Carp and many other big fish baits. In addition, we have bait boats for use by specialist anglers who like fishing at extreme distances. This could be over to an island feature on a local lake or across the sea on trips to France and other Continental countries.

Carp.com stocks fishing rods from all the leading brands to catch any species you like to target. So if you want to specialise with catfish, barbel, Carp, predators, Tench or Bream, we have the tackle to meet your needs; check out the dedicated products on our website.

Other specialist items we stock are fishing bedchairs and day chairs from all the key manufacturers. To stop you from getting wet or cold at night, we have 2 man bivvies and 1 man bivvies, fishing bivvies from all the key angling brands. If you are an avid carp angler, we have the fishing tackle to meet your needs, so search; you will find almost everything on our website.