Ash Ponds – 20th October 2024

After the weather had been lovely the previous day, we were in for an all together different prospect today with heavy rain and 60mph winds forecast – great! We were at Ash Ponds for the culmination of Stoke AA’s various leagues, it’s normally big weights of carp which isn’t my cup of tea but as I was leading the Silvers Bowl, I wanted to get my name on that trophy again.

At the draw, the 15 anglers would be spread over Lakes 2 and 3, both are rammed with fish (carp and silvers) but the former is slightly less prolific for carp and also holds a decent head of big skimmers and bream. As I’d drawn Lake 3 the previous two years, surely it would be third time lucky and I’d be on my preferred lake this time? Nope, peg 11 on Lake 3 once again and just to add to the fun, the rain and wind would be right in my chops all day!

I get my kit to the swim and to be honest, I wasn’t up for this at all, the weather was already horrible and the thought of sitting in it for six hours wasn’t particularly appealing! The aim of the game for me was getting as little gear out as possible so I wouldn’t need to worry about it getting blown in the pond behind me. With that in mind I assembled I just two top kits along with one section of pole and on the side tray I had loads of maggots, some corn and Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark.

We got underway and I fed the top kit plus one line with a single ball of groundbait and went straight over it with single maggot on the hook. A bite first chuck resulted in a nice 6oz pommie/silver bream followed by a small roach and then a decent one which I stupidly tried to swing and it dropped off! All around the pond, there was elastic out everywhere as people were into carp from the start.

It then went a bit quiet for me and I should have known what was coming next as the float buried and elastic streamed from the pole before I landed a 6lb carp. Trying the top kit to hand, it was a bite a chuck from mainly small rudd and roach along with the odd better one and of course regular visits from carp.

Although big weights were expected, as we reached the halfway point, it was fishing so well it had taken most people by surprise and when Les B next to me decided to have an early bath, some of the anglers asked if they could have his keepnets! For me I was going through the motions a bit as everyone else on my lake was fishing for carp and there wasn’t even the worry that someone might beat me with a weight of accidental silvers as they’d all chucked them back to use the nets for carp!

It was all a bit bonkers really and even though the decision was made to increase the net limits from 50 to 60lb, some people were having to return fish and even behind me on the normally more sensible Lake 2, there were going to be some massive weights and I’d seen Craig throw back several decent skimmers.

Thankfully the weather cleared up for the last hour or so and it was actually quite a nice day, I finished up with over 200 silvers plus two keepnets of accidentals. I had to give Chanter a hand to weigh in and it was going to take a while!

We started with him and after all his nets were totted up (any nets over were knocked back to 60lb), he set the bar with 291lb 10oz. My carp went 101lb 10oz and my silvers added 14lb 3oz, Les had gone and then we got to Vic Bush who had eight nets in which after much adding up came to a huge 376lb!

The Grand Wiz had 237lb 8oz, John Dursley weighed 231lb 10oz and I was glad Chanter was doing the heavy lifting as I was knackered just watching him! Nick Chedzoy also broke the triple ton with 322lb 15oz and last to weigh on our lake was Roy Worth who had 347lb 14oz for second place!

On the other lake, Terry ‘The Toast’ was top with 289lb 2oz followed by Rob Wylde with 229lb 6oz and Fieldy had the best silvers weight with 12lb 6oz.

Pond 2
1 – Terry Morgan (Stoke) – 289lb 2oz
2 – Rob Wylde (Stoke) – 229lb 6oz

Pond 3
1 – Vic Bush (Stoke) – 376lb
2 – Roy Worth (Stoke) – 347lb 14oz

Silvers
Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 14lb 3oz

The final standings in the three leagues were;

Club Champion – Dave Pope

Lake Rosebowl – John Dursley

Silvers Rosebowl – Jamie Rich

I picked up £20 for winning the silvers and it was nice to get my name on the Silvers Rosebowl for the second year running but as I said earlier, it’s not my favourite kind of fishing, lots of small fish (and carp!).

Thanks to £5 from the Grand Wiz and £2 each from Nick Payne and me, the Nugget-O-Meter climbed to £454.

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 – Ivy House

Coming soon – Lots more match reports

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