On Sunday it was another Xmas match, this time at Summerhayes and parking was at a premium with 40 anglers booked in! It was a rover with all lakes in and also a rolling draw which obviously depended on someone pulling out choice one before it could get underway! Nick pulled out choice 7 and when I asked what the next lowest choice left was, Roy said number 9, I delved in and grabbed a ball stating it felt like number 9 and it was!!!! So finally my drawing arm seems to have found a bit of form as we near the end of the year, hopefully it’ll continue into 2025.
All the available pegs were on a whiteboard on the wall, Nick had gone for 32 which was my first choice so I went for 13 which is also a brilliant silvers peg. For company I had Paul Homewood on 12 who I hadn’t seen for ages and Geoff Young was the other side, it was also his birthday and he’s 77 so has obviously had a hard paper round!
Peg 13
Rigs for today were a 0.1 gram Colmic Elsa for two lines at top five and 13 metres plus a 0.2 gram rig for across to the island at 14.5 metres. A nice simple side tray with lots of maggots, disco pinkies and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark groundbait.
Pete got us underway and I fed the shorter swims and 13 metres with gb and pinkies before pinging a few maggots across. Kicking off on the top five lines, my first fish after a few minutes was a little skimmer and I was getting regular indications. After an hour I had four of five skimmers and some little roach but bites began to tail off going into the second sixty minutes.
I stuck with it putting odd fish in the net as I didn’t want to go on the longer lines too early. With two hours gone, I ventured out to 13 metres and had another nice run of little skimmers around 4-6oz. When that began to fade, I had another look short but couldn’t get a bite there now and feeding a new line a section further out was a flop so it was time to have my first look at 14.5 metres. A small roach first chuck was followed by some better ones along with the odd little skimmer and my catch rate was still ticking over nicely.
The final hour was really nice and I had two decent skimmers in quick succession but also hooked my first carp which eventually snapped me. When Pete blew for the all out, I was shipping back a decent 8-10oz skimmer and had really enjoyed that. I ended up with 54 fish which I hoped would go somewhere between 6-8lb.
Roy had the scales so I grabbed the board and we started at peg 3 where Kev O had 11lb 12oz, Martin B didn’t weigh, Big Bad Bob on 7 had 21lb 9oz and then Alex Kerr went into the lead with 31lb 2oz. Roy had 6lb 4oz of silvers, Paul weighed 5lb 9oz, my silvers went 9lb 9oz before the birthday boy had 26lb 7oz on 16.
Alex defected to the dark side to weigh 31lb 2oz
Roy weighed 6lb 4oz of silvers on peg 10
I had 54 fish (skimmers and roach) for 9lb 9oz
Alan J weighed 3lb 2oz, Paul E on had 10lb 10oz and then Hollywood plonked an excellent 71lb 6oz of carp in the weigh sling to go into first place. Martin Heard weighed 24lb 7oz on 31, Nick had 5lb 10oz and Jacko weighed 23lb 13oz. Nigel P on peg 35 had 12lb 8oz, Roger C weighed 14lb 9oz and last by not least was Chris Whitham on 39 who went into second spot with 36lb 14oz.
Hollywood had the top weight on the day with an excellent 71lb 6oz of carp
Chris did well with 36lb 14oz on peg 39
Back at the results and on Big 8 there were some lovely nets of silvers, Ally Robinson had the best weight on the day with 13lb 2oz of quality roach and skimmers while Rob Birch weighed 13lb which included a big perch and a large eel plus roach and skimmers. Martin Addicott was top on Denny’s with 24lb 2oz and Toby Burrell had the best weight on Sellicks with 31lb 8oz from peg 9.
All the anglers enjoyed burger and chips before it was time for the prize giving, there were hampers for the top three carp and silvers weights and I took home a lovely bundle of goodies.
1 – Ian Williams (Summerhayes) – 71lb 6oz
2 – Chris Whitham (Summerhayes) – 36lb 14oz
3 – Toby Burrell (Team Army) – 31lb 8oz
Silvers
1 – Ally Robinson (Summerhayes) – 13lb 3oz
2 – Rob Birch (Summerhayes) – 13lb
3 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 9lb 9oz
Paul Homewood very kindly gave me £3 and Craig Lyttle added a squid as the Nugget-O-Meter climbed to £25.
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 – Revels
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
#sponsoredpost #affiliatelinks
