Acorn was the destination for Saturday’s match, there was a great turnout of 27 and when the draw was announced, I hung back hoping to avoid the pegs on the bend (26-30). When I went to delve into the bag, there were no pegs left! Chris had to call everyone back and after adding another ball to the bag, there was the dreaded redraw where half the field who were happy with their pegs would end up disappointed and vice versa. For me, it was actually my first draw and I pulled out 15 on the far side, an okay area for silvers but it wouldn’t have been my first choice.
For company I had Jerry on my left and YouTube vlogger, Bob ‘Bunghole’ Gullick on my right, Nick had drawn peg 4 on the island but second time round ended up with 27! I set up two Preston Innovations F1 Maggots to fish 10 metres straight out, the same distance but angled to the right down the middle and top two plus two. Nice and simple side tray with two pints of casters, maggots, worms plus some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark groundbait.
Bunghole Bob setting up the cameras on the next peg
We got underway and I fed groundbait and maggots straight out and at top two while the line down the middle got a big pot of casters. All three lines were fizzing like crazy as soon as I fed them and I started at 10 metres with single maggot on the hook. I was getting indications from the off although a fair few were liners as there were loads of carp in the upper layers and I wasn’t too surprised when I struck at a bite and a lump tore off. It obviously wasn’t hooked right and it took me 15 mins to reverse an 8lb carp into the net!
The next fish was the intended target and a nice tench of a pound and quarter got me up and running on the silvers front. I then had a skimmer followed by a lovely 4lb tench and it felt like there were a lot of fish in the swim and a good weight was on the cards. After an hour I probably had around 8lb and if I could maintain that catch rate, I wouldn’t be far off the 50lb that has been winning the silvers recently.
The second sixty minutes was a bit slower as I got to 13lb but I did pull out of a decent tench. The line down the middle was still bubbling like a jacuzzi and I was itching to drop in on it but to be honest it was a bit of an anti-climax. A small tench was encouraging but then the next fish was a goldfish and then I had a small carp, I tried half a worm but the float just sat there and when it did go under, it was another carp so that was enough of that!
Back on the line straight out, I was getting very occasional bites but from doing well I was now struggling. Bunghole was catching well although he also provided the entertainment when he landed a big carp only for the net to rip and the fish went back in the water still attached to his line. He had to somehow unscrew the landing net head and attach a new one, all the while trying to play a sizeable carp, which he managed, so fair play and I hope that makes the final edit!
I went back down the middle feeding casters via a toss pot and the catch rate ticked over with the odd skimmer and a nice 3lb tench. With an hour and a half to go, I’ve come in on the short line and had a really nice finish with some big skimmers and several tench around 1.5lb although I did bump a skimmer right on the whistle.
The scales arrived quite quickly and Bob had a massive 204lb 8oz, then my four carp and a goldfish went 14lb 3oz and my two nets of silvers totalled 40lb 13oz and I knew it wouldn’t be enough today. Jerry weighed 114lb 11oz and then Rob on peg 18 had 234lb 15oz before the scales headed up the lake and I finished packing up.
I had a nice day catching 40lb 13oz of skimmers, tench and a roach
Back at the results and as always the weights are really close, Howard Green on peg 40 just pipped Rob with 235lb 10oz (which included 36lb 1oz of silvers), Martin Rayett had the best silvers weight with 44lb 14oz from peg 38 but as he didn’t go in the silvers superpool, I picked up £20 for second. Nick P also had a nice net of silvers with 30lb 14oz.
1 – Howard Green (Acorn) – 235lb 10oz
2 – Rob Wiltshire (Acorn) – 234lb 15oz
3 – Bob Gullick (Acorn) – 204lb 8oz
4 – Mark Williams (Acorn) – 193lb 3oz
5 – Barry Richards (Acorn) – 190lb 14oz
Silvers
1 – Martin Rayet (Acorn) – 44lb 14oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 40lb 13oz
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 – Dillington
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
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