Saturday we headed up the M5 to Acorn for another of Chris Fox’s opens, as always it was well attended with 27 anglers booked in. I was hoping for one of the eight bridge pegs or something like 1, 5, 9, 10, 36 or 38 so basically a one in two chance. My drawing arm remains hopelessly broken as I pulled out 31 and Nick didn’t fare any better with 29, not where either of us wanted to be!
I set up two Preston Innovations F1 Maggots to fish 10 metres straight out, the same distance but angled to the left down the middle and top two plus two. A nice and simple side tray with two pints of casters, maggots and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark groundbait.
On the whistle I fed the short swim and straight out with groundbait and maggots while I big potted casters on the left hand line. It was slow going at 10 metres and after half an hour, I had one missed bite to show for my efforts! A few minutes later I finally got off the mark with a nice skimmer but it didn’t really signal the opening of the floodgates and I only added a small skimbob and a roach during the rest of the first hour. Nick got off to a better start with four or five skimmers.
The second hour was a bit better for me with some decent skimmers and I also had my first look on the caster line but it wasn’t great and I just couldn’t gain any ground on Nick who always seemed to be a few fish ahead. Swapping between the two longer lines, I ticked over putting odd skimmers in the net hoping some of the big tench might put in an appearance.
With two and half hours to go, I’ve dropped in on the short line for the first time and although it wasn’t solid and I was having to wait for bites, I started catching some big skimmers along with a couple of small tench and was gradually closing the gap on Nick. It was lovely fishing and although I did lose two big fish that I think were foulhooked tench, I wasn’t having too many carp problems and only hooked half a dozen all day.
When the all out was called I was playing a small tench of 10oz or so and ended up with 22 fish (plus some smaller fish I hadn’t counted) which I thought would weigh between 20-25lb but as 40-50lb has been winning the silvers, I was sure I’d be miles off the pace.
We were nearly last to weigh on our side and when the scales arrived my fish went 30lb 1oz which was a little more than I thought and then Nick had 21lb 1oz. Chris turned up with the board from the other side and said Paul Faiers had the top silvers there with 31lb 9oz so it had actually been really close but no cigar for me although I did pick up a consolation tenner from the superpool as Paul hadn’t gone in it. Photo courtesy of Garteh Boycott*
Gareth had the top weight again, this time with 190lb 13oz from peg 24 and he’s on a blistering run of form winning everywhere he goes at the moment – class angler*
1 – Gareth Boycott (Acorn) – 190lb 13oz
2 – Matty Hamilton (Milo) – 188lb 12oz
3 – Neil Morgan (Acorn) – 166lb 1oz
4 – Mark Walsh (Acorn) – 162lb 9oz
5 – Chris Harrison (Acorn) – 162lb 1oz
Silvers
1 – Paul Faiers (Acorn) – 31lb 9oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 30lb 1oz
Always a close frame at Acorn and I really enjoy the fishing, I did have several little skimmers today around 3-4oz, some small roach and even a little 2oz tench so they’ve obviously bred which is a good sign for the future.
A very generous £10 from Nick Payne plus my £2 saw the Nugget-O-Meter reach £426.
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 Lakes
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
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