I haven’t been to Todber for a few weeks so was looking forward to this one although looking at the recent results, it’s been fishing quite hard with around 16lb winning and low double figures enough to frame.
John announced the draw and I employed my usual tactic of hanging back hoping to avoid peg 63 but with only two pegs left in the bucket, it was still in there and my plan was looking like it had seriously backfired. Thankfully Pete Neate came to my rescue leaving me with 74, a decent area although I’d have preferred to have been nearer the middle of the lake.
I set up a little 0.3 gram Guru F1 Slim for the top two to hand, a 0.2 gram Guru AR to fish through the water and a Preston Innovations F1 Maggot to fish two lines at 13 metres. Lots of options on the side tray with corn, maggots, casters, worms, micros and Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark.
On the whistle I flicked a few casters short and then fed two lines at 13 metres, one angled to the right with micros and corn and the other with a sloppy ball of groundbait, chopped worms and casters. Starting short with single maggot, I was expecting to catch quite quickly but after fifteen minutes I hadn’t had a bite!
Moving out to the 13 metre worm line it wasn’t really happening there either, after another lengthy wait, I finally had a bite on single red maggot but a tiny half ounce roach wasn’t the first fish I was hoping for. I couldn’t get a bite on corn so tried worm and started getting a few indications from the odd slightly better skimmer and roach although I also had two leapers come off.
It was short lived though and after that little flurry of fish I just couldn’t get a bite again, I tried loose feeding casters, fishing past the feed, using the lighter rig through the water but nothing was getting a response. I tried starting a new line at top two plus three sections and did have two little 3oz skimbobs but I was going nowhere fast. Shaun on 75 was getting the odd fish up the edge but from what I could see, it was fishing really difficult again.
All I could muster in the remaining two hours was one more tiny roach and at the all out, I knew I wouldn’t be troubling the scales with my final tally of ten fish for around 2lb. Shaun had 6lb something, the guy on my left weighed 4lb 2oz and Dave next to him had 4lb+. As for the rest of the ‘Ilminster Massive’, Norts and Parker ‘The Pole’ had similar days to me recording DNW’s while Nick P did well with 9lb 3oz but just missed out on framing. Photos courtesy of Todber Manor*
Andy on 69 had the top weight with 15lb*
Ade was second with 10lb 12oz from 65*
Darel had 9lb 8oz for third on the day*
1 – Andy Akehurst – 15lb (69)
2 – Ade West – 10lb 12oz (65)
3 – Darel Faleto – 9lb 8oz (66)
A disappointing day and I’m not really sure what I’d do differently if I fished the match again.
Thanks to £2 from Norts the Nugget-O-Meter climbed to £355.
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 – River Parrett
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
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