If you needed one episode to capture where serious UK carp fishing sits in May 2026, Korda Thinking Tackle UNCUT episode 40 is it. Tom Dove, Neil Spooner, Adam Reed and a returning Damian Clarke spent the show talking about UK 50-pounders cropping up at a rate that has even the Korda 50 bell ringing more often than usual, Spooner's £5,825 charity marathon, and a public bet that has Tom Dove looking nervously at the 2027 London ballot.
The quote that may follow this episode around for the rest of the season came early. "40s are 30s now, aren't they? Yeah, they're getting bigger and bigger," Tom said, after Adam Reed offered the sharper-still observation that some lakes are now "for 50s, not 40s" in his opinion. The room agreed. "There's a lot more 50-pounders cropping up now," Tom added. "Why are fish getting so much bigger now? I've got no idea. They're just getting bigger and bigger."
Spooner brought the receipts. He'd just landed a 41 lb 8 oz dark, scaly mirror at Clearwater on an adjustable zig fished five feet under the surface — the second time he'd had that exact fish off the spot. "That's a spring marker, isn't it?" he said. A few hours later in the same swim he had the lake's other big fish, the Sergeant, on a near-identical bite. "It was 40 lb 4 oz. Dropped a bit of weight, but it was still 40."
A quick guest spell at Brazos added more. "Got there in the evening, caught two before dark. Got up at first light to redo the rods and I had six fish between six in the morning and eight," he said. "Then it just died. No matter what I did, they'd obviously moved." Just before light on the last morning he hooked the trip's biggest. "That thing popped up which is not only a mega carp but it was another 40 — pound 4."
Alongside the carp, the episode handled the obligatory marathon catch-up. Spooner ran London on Sunday two weeks before recording, raising £5,825.20 for charity. Tom and Adam went to spectate but missed him at mile six because Spooner had pulled on a bright cord-green 802 t-shirt instead of the yellow Lennox top they'd been told to look for. "It's the best thing I've ever done. The hardest thing I've ever done," Spooner said. "I got to about mile 19 thinking this is never going to finish. I'd fueled correctly. But you realise how hard it is. And when I got to the finish line, if someone had been there with some paraffin and a light, I would have just burnt me shoes and it would have been done." Half an hour later he was already in the next year's ballot — and had signed Tom up too.
That handshake turned into the bet that drives most of the second half of the show. If Spooner catches a UK 50-pounder before day 100 of his current campaign — he was on day 57 at recording — Tom Dove agreed to commit to the 2027 London Marathon. "All right, well, I've got nothing to lose, have I?" Tom said. Adam Reed signed himself in to run with them. As a fallback, Tom may instead be roped into a charity wing walk strapped to the top of a biplane — something he's only willing to do if the donations top a 25-grand target the room jokingly threw out for the comments.
The other big topic was the Korda Dura film, which crossed 250,000 views in its first week. Damian Clarke landed a 60 lb-plus mirror on the trip — the fish he calls a lifetime's work — while Tom and Adam spent two weeks on the lake for one bite between them. "It's hard to keep it flowy and keep the audience interested enough to watch it right the way through when not a lot's happening," Tom said of the edit. "Damian catching that 60-pounder, that's a lifetime's worth of work for him."
The lads admit the Dura is brutal — Tom called it "so far out of the back of my mind" when asked if he'd return — but Spooner confirmed he and Tom would happily go again. "It's like the dream capture," Tom said. "Such a mega place."
On every count, the episode reads like a snapshot of where serious UK carp angling is in May 2026: bigger fish than at any point most of the room can remember, a generation of anglers running marathons between sessions, and a bet that may yet stick Tom Dove on a start line he never planned to cross.