Revels Fishery – Open – 30th December 2023

My final match of 2023 was back at Revels and as per usual I met Parker ‘The Pole’ at Greggs for breakfast. It looked like the weather might be a little better today but by the time we’d finished eating, normal service had resumed and it was chucking it down again!

18 fishing today and we’d be on Main, Dead Tree and Middle lakes, of course I was hoping to draw on the latter but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen! Jason got the draw underway and when my name was called out, peg 18 on Main was my home for the day, not my first choice but it can be good for silvers.

When I got there, I thought it might be fairly sheltered as it’s down the bank so hopefully the wind would be over my back. I set up my usual 0.2 gram Bobbies to fish two lines at 11.5 metres angled to my right where it was a little deeper. No inside line as it was only inches deep and gin clear. The side tray for today contained maggots, disco pinkies and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark.

We got underway and I fed one line with a little loose gb and a few pinkies and the other slightly more positively. It took ten minutes to get a bite on the negative line from a very small perch and then I began getting a few but there was no size to them. Switching to the other line just resulted in more of the same small perch and I also hooked my first carp which I landed after a lengthy scrap on number six elastic.

The wind was getting worse and blowing left to right one minute, then it would be straight at you or swirling around and then gusting from right to left and coupled with heavy rain at times, it was a bloody nightmare. I did catch a couple of half decent perch around 6-8oz and was getting the odd roach but every time it went quiet, you knew what was coming next and I landed a small carp but also lost a couple.

At one stage I struck into a carp and it wasn’t doing a lot but the wind blew the pole in one direction and with the fish pulling the opposite way, the hooklength gave way! It was a real struggle but nobody I could see was catching much with the exception of Simon on peg 20 who’d landed half a dozen carp.

Towards the end of the match, I was catching some roach but also hooking quite a few carp (in total I landed three and lost seven!). The angler on 16 started packing up before the end as did Rob Fletcher over on peg 4 and I must admit I was glad to hear the final whistle. The scores on the doors didn’t make pretty reading for me, I ended up with 38 fish (perch, roach and a gudgeon) plus those three carp.

When the scales got round to me, the top two silvers weights had come from Middle lake and Paul Wyatt was third with 5lb 4oz from peg 43 on Dead Tree and I knew I had nowhere near that. My silvers went 3lb 1oz and the three carp weighed 11lb 2oz. Simon was last to weigh and he had 37lb 9oz which was top on the day.

1 – Simon Diment (Revels) – 37lb 9oz
2 – John Moody (Revels) – 29lb 11oz
3 – Ian Browncey (Revels) – 21lb 15oz

Silvers
1 – J Sibley (Revels) – 6lb 15oz
2 – Casey (Revels) – 6lb 8oz
3 – Paul Wyatt (Revels) – 5lb 4oz

So a disappointing match to end the year on but it’s been a fantastic twelve months for me and I’ll do my usual little round up shortly. I’ve probably had enough carp on to frame or possibly win today so maybe I should have actually fished for them but then possibly I’ve only hooked that many as I was fishing light? By the same token, I knew I was doing ok (I had the top silvers weight on Main) so for all I knew, the other lakes were fishing hard as well.

Well that’s goodbye to 2023 so I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone who reads the blog, A Happy New Year and Tight Lines for 2024!

There’s still a great offer running if you fancy treating yourself to some new fishing gear, use the exclusive discount code AgainstMenandFish10 to get 10% off when you shop online at Somerset Angling

Also I still have copies of my book available from eBay here or Amazon here