It was back to Acorn on Saturday for another of Chris Fox’s opens and when draw time arrived, Jenny did the honours for Nick and pulled out a good one, bridge peg 21, I kept up my habit of drawing the same pegs when I was on 36 for the third time! Another really hot day was forecast but one of the nice things about my peg is that it’s in the shade.
Plumbing up, it’s probably the deepest swim on the lake and I set up rigs to fish top two plus two straight out, a section shorter angled to the right and at 11.5 metres off the point of the island. On the whistle I fed groundbait (Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark) and maggots on the two shorter lines and just pinged maggots at 11.5 metres.
I started on the top two plus two line and was getting indications from the off, after a few minutes I had a roach, followed by a nice skimmer and then hooked a bigger fish which turned out to be a gorgeous 4lb tench. It was a bite a chuck from skimmers to 2lb along with tench between 8oz and a pound, after a brilliant hour I had around 17lb and it felt like a big weight was on the cards.
The second hour was decent and I was up to 25lb but it was slowing up so I had my first look on the top two plus one line. I had a few fish, roach along with the odd skimmer and tench but any thoughts of having to use three nets for silvers was beginning to disappear. Also Nick and Paul Faiers (on peg 4) were starting to catch really well and it looked like they were landing some decent tench whereas I still only had the one.
Back on the other line, I added some more skimmers but I was also hooking a few carp and returned several lumpy ones up to around 9-10lb. Several times I’ve hooked big fish and would have sworn blind they were tench only to be disappointed. I’d been pinging maggots at 11.5 metres since the start so with an hour and a half to go and bites dwindling on my shorter lines, I had my first look but two carp in as many chucks soon put an end to that.
I tried going past the feed on the top two plus two line which resulted in a couple of decent skimmers and at the all out, I had 60 fish but as I only had the one big tench, I knew it wouldn’t be enough today, especially as Nick and Paul both had three nets of silvers.
When the scales reached me, Paul had weighed a brilliant 60lb 9oz, my two nets went 47lb 9oz which is still a fantastic days fishing (and I chucked back 40lb of carp) but I was a little disappointed after catching 25lb in the first two hours and then only 22lb in the next four! Then it was across to Nick, his first two nets weighed 46lb+ so his third net needed to go 14lb but was just short at 13lb odd. His total was a 60lb 3oz, a lovely net of fish but agonisingly 6oz short of winning the silvers.
47lb 9oz and another awesome days silvers fishing
Nick had his best Acorn silvers weight so far with 60lb 3oz but was a skimmer short of winning
Back at the results and Gareth had won again with a massive 252lb 3oz of carp from peg 1 (that’s the last three matches I’ve fished that he’s won with over 200lb!). It was tight though as Bob ‘Bunghole’ Gullick had 251lb 15oz and had a net knocked back. Along with Nick and Bob getting ounced, match organiser Chris missed framing by 2oz so lots of close weights.
1 – Gareth Boycott (Acorn) – 252lb 3oz
2 – Bob Gullick (Mosella) – 251lb 15oz
3 – Robert Skellett (Acorn) – 196lb 11oz
4 – Graham Smith (Acorn) – 192lb 6oz
5 – Phil Weaver (Acorn) – 179lb 9oz
Silvers
1 – Paul Faiers (Acorn) – 60lb 9oz
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