Saturday it was back to Todber for another silvers open on Ash, I met Nick and Duffers for breakfast before we headed to the venue. After getting some bait, it was time for the draw and I thought I’d try being at the end of the queue again as it seems to have worked well recently. With just two tickets left, I could see nobody had written 63 down on the board yet and it was looking like my great plan might have backfired!
Martin Rogers grabbed one which turned out to be 68 leaving me with the one peg I didn’t want, I opened my ticket and it took my tiny brain a moment to realise I was on 71 (great peg) and not 63 which wasn’t actually in today! Duffers was on 64, Nick drew 74 again and for company I had Lee Jan to my left and regular neighbour Pete Neate was on 72.
I set up a little 0.3 gram Guru F1 Slim for the top two plus two along with a Preston Innovations F1 Maggot to fish two lines at 13 metres. On the side tray were maggots, casters, worms, micros, expanders plus some Bait-Tech Special G F1 and Dark groundbait.
At the all in, I fed the short line with some gb and casters while 13 metres angled to the left was fed with a sloppy worm bomb and the right with micros. Starting on the top kit plus two, my first fish was a little 3oz skimbob, next chuck I had a decent one of 10oz and was getting a few bites. A few more followed but it soon faded so I went out on the pellet line and was expecting a quick response after catching well on it in the last match. It’s just not happened though and after half an hour I’ve only had one little skimmer and missed a couple of bites.
I’ve tried maggot over the micros and then on the worm line but only had a couple of fish and from what I could see it was fishing quite hard apart from Martin who was catching well. Around two hours in, I noticed rather a lot of elastic coming from Nick P’s pole tip as he was into a big fish which he thought was a carp but turned out to be a rather handy bonus 4-5lb catfish!
I was getting odd 6-8oz skimmers on worm but was waiting ages for bites so in a bid to try and make something happen, I began loose feeding casters as well as toss potting little blobs of my choppie worm mix. It worked to a certain extent as I had my first big 2lb skimmer on double caster but felt I was way off the pace with Martin still regularly netting fish, Lee now catching quite well and Nick P had added a decent tench to his catfish and was also getting some skimmers.
Another look short was fruitless so I tried the light rig on the longer line where I’d been feeding casters, first put in with single red maggot on the hook, the float buried and I was expecting a small fish but number five Slip streamed from the pole tip, shipping back carefully I netted another big 2lb+ skimmer. A couple of smaller ones followed and then I hooked another decent fish that I hoped would be a tench although knowing my luck it would be a carassio, only for a little catfish of a pound to pop up! (my first in the UK).
Guy turned up for his usual lunchtime visit (still no cake!) and confirmed that it was fishing relatively hard with a few anglers admitting to 8-10lb. I had a couple more fish on worm and then tried fishing past the feed with the strung out rig and had my best fish of the day, a skimmer/bream that was well over 3lb. For the remainder of the match I kept swapping between lines, rigs and hookbaits and was putting the odd fish in the net including another decent skimmer on worm and also had my first carp of the day.
On the whistle I’d finished up with 58 fish and thought I had around 18lb but didn’t think that would do any good as you normally need 25lb+ to frame. When the scales arrived, Martin was winning with 27lb 6oz, Lee next door weighed 16lb 4oz which also included a little catfish, then my fish went 21lb 8oz and I was gobsmacked when Guy said that was second so far but there were still a few left to weigh.
Pete had chucked back, Nick P weighed 16lb 10oz and then Nick C had loads of roach for 14lb 6oz. So I finished second and had a nice pick up of £70, those big skimmers make all the difference as I had four that probably went 10lb. It’s always a pretty tight frame and as there was only 2lb 8oz between second and fourth place, it just shows how important those bonus fish are. Photos courtesy of Todber Manor*
Martin won with a lovely net of skimmers for 27lb 6oz*
I was second with 21lb 8oz which included my first ever UK catfish*
Matt Skyme was third with 19lb 4oz from peg 67*
Jon Gray had 19lb on peg 62*
Nick weighed 16lb 10oz including his first ever moggy!*
Duffers had a nice net of roach and skimmers for 16lb*
Adrian Dew weighed 14lb 2oz on peg 66*
1 – Martin Rogers (Todber) – 27lb 6oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Against Men and Fish) – 21lb 8oz
3 – Matt Skyme (Todber) – 19lb 4oz
£2 each from Nick and me (for today and tomorrow) went into the Nugget-O-Meter which now stands at £206.
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
And if you could spare five minutes to leave a nice review on Amazon, it would be very much appreciated.
Next up – Thorney
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
#sponsoredpost #affiliatelinks
