My name is Craig Ridge, I live in Hertfordshire, I started fishing aged 4 on local rivers and canals with my dad, honing my skills trotting a stick float down the river Ivel and whip fishing on the Grand Union Canal, when I got to a standard where I thought I could compete in matches I started to fish my local junior club matches. In the first year as a 10-year-old I won the under 16 league and a cup, I thought I’m not bad at this, for the next few years I cleaned up winning everything that was available to me, even events that were vs other clubs, at 15 I got involved with the adult team and started winning a few matches in my first year and picking up enough points to qualify for the team events where I went on to fish in Nationals and Eastern regions every year until I was about 19/20. In total I won about 50 trophies in 10 years across the junior and adult leagues before I decided to take up carp fishing, where I smashed up the local day tickets learning how to catch fish on different tactics and rigs. I soon started to miss the matches and the competition, so I decided to enter the carp matches with a pal, well that was an eye opener as I had to upgrade the whole gear to be able to compete with the best but after a year or 2, we soon started to make a few finals and before long we were making finals of all the big matches, in singles and double events, the British Carp Champs, the UK Carp Cup, the Southern, Midlands and Northern Cups. In 2016 we won the Northern Carp Cup and brought it back to the South, beating some of the best in the country. I left the match scene a year or so after to target a few a bigger fish, but I’m sure one day I’ll return to have another go, it’s not for the faint hearted though.  

I now fish day ticket waters and a local club with some old scaley Carp in, I’m going to see if I can winkle out a few off these wrinkly ones.  

Thanks for reading and if you see me on the bank come say hello the kettles always on. 

Name: Craig Ridge  

Nickname: Big Ridge  

Date of birth: 13-09-1982 

Location: Hertfordshire 

Pb: 27lb.12 Mirror 

Pb: 28lb Common  

Favourite Wolf product: The Competition X-Spod