Tom Oliver Articles
May can always be a funny month for angling as the fish can often spawn if the spring has been a warm one. We have had an exceptionally mild winter this year and as a result most lakes around the country have started much earlier than last year and my syndicate is no exception. This [...]
April has been a fairly busy month for me starting with a French Trip to Lac De Laneuville. Myself and fellow GT anglers Calum Kletta and Alan Stagg made the long journey with a couple of other friends and had planned on doing some filming whilst we were there. We arrived late and as it [...]
March has been full of ups and downs for me with some frustrating fishing whilst trying to make a start on a new venue. The first weekend of March saw me heading straight to the lake to try and put my plans and preparation in to action and after sitting in traffic for a little [...]
Well as the title suggests it’s been a rather slow start to 2014 for me. I decided that I was going to spend my winter on the water I had been fishing all season, even though it was not known for much if any winter form. Last year I had fished the other lake on [...]
Well autumn is now well under way and many of us will be out making the most of it, hoping for a big autumn feed before the fish slowly start to wind down for the winter. Many anglers choose to hang up their rods in winter waiting for the first signs of spring to arrive [...]
Small Changes That Make A BIG Difference by Tom Oliver I recently had a week booked off work and had planned a trip to my southern syndicate lake with the hope of getting amongst some of the larger residents as well as filming a few pieces for Gardner Tackle. I arrived at the lake on [...]
Name: Tom Oliver Experience: Nine years out and out carp fishing but around twenty years fishing in total. I now work as a full time angling coach. Favourite lake: Current Southern Syndicate. All-time best bait… Maggots. My number one rig is… Solid PVA Bag’s. Weirdest thing you’ve seen a carp do? I once saw a [...]
After a great week teaching at FLE I headed towards the Ringwood valley to spend the weekend at my syndicate lake. I had not been able to fish for a while due to the recent comps so was buzzing to get back after recent successes. After a few laps of a fairly busy lake I [...]
The weather was looking pretty carpy as I woke up on Friday morning with overcast skies, warm winds and a very good chance of some rain. I drove to work with only one thing on my mind and that was how the weekend was going to pan out! I had arranged to finish early to [...]
The last weekend of April saw us taking an early day on the Thursday to travel to Kent for our BCAC qualifier that was to be held at Orchard Place Farm in Kent. Myself and fishing partner Graham Mabey were joined by our good friend Martin Hancock for the weekend as he had kindly offered [...]
March is always a funny month as the daytime can feel like summer with mild temperatures and the sun’s rays beating down, then come nightfall it is as if someone has flicked the switch back to winter! However for those willing to brave the conditions some fantastic fish can be caught and lots of big [...]
After a fantastic Christmas and New Year spent with my family my thoughts turned once again to carp fishing. I had only managed a short five hour day session in the month of December and that was to take my younger brother James fishing. He did well and managed to bag around a dozen carp [...]
After a busy day coaching the van was loaded and we were heading to Warwickshire in aid of the 2012 Carp-in-4-Cancer event. We fished in the event last year and actually managed to win with the added bonus of also taking away the biggest fish trophy. This year we would be defending our title on [...]
After finishing off another brilliant but busy week at FLE I headed up the A34 towards Banbury where my parents live. The area holds some very special memories for me - not only is it the place I grew up but it’s where I started my obsession with angling, and more specifically carp fishing! As [...]
Charity Carping Success! It has been an early start to our competition season this year with our first match being the Charity-Carping pairs match qualifier. The match took place over the last weekend in February and was held at the Willows Lakes complex on the notorious Match Lake. We arrived at the venue on the [...]
Its been an extremely busy year with my angling since I decided to take up competition carp fishing at a serious level. As any of you that compete in these competitions will understand it takes up a lot of your angling time and often means you miss out on the best times of the year [...]
We were invited out to fish this year’s inaugural Media Carp Masters at the new Resort Du Der in the Champagne Region of France. The complex consists of three newly dug lakes that are each stocked with more than 200 carp to well over 50lb. The event was scheduled to start on the Friday morning, [...]
