Summerhayes – Open – 4th January 2025

The weekend arrived and so did more crazy weather, waking up Saturday morning I was greeted with a hard frost while the forecast for Sunday was heavy rain and temperatures ten degrees warmer. It’s no wonder the fish don’t know if they’re coming or going!

We were on Sellicks which fished quite well in the last match although it was flat calm and after the cold start I thought 7lb would be a good weight today. Pete announced the draw starting with the golden peg which was number 6. Dan T pulled out 8 and then I was next on the list and for the second match running, drew the bonus ball!

I set up a 4×12 F1 Maggot for two lines at 11.5 metres and a 0.2 gram Elsa for 14.5 metres across. The side tray had a familiar look to it with lots of maggots, disco pinkies plus some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark groundbait.

On the whistle I fed little nuggets of gb with some pinkies on the 11.5 metre lines and began pinging some maggots over to the island. As expected it was a slow start and Dan T was the first angler to get a bite on our side but a near double figure carp wasn’t the intended target!

I was swapping between my two 11.5 metre swims and after 15 mins, the float sailed away on the left hand line only for me to strike into thin air! A further quarter of an hour passed before I had another indication, this time from the right hand line and a small perch opened my account. My next fish was a roach and although it was far from frantic, when I had a decent pound plus perch I felt I was doing okay as not a lot had been caught around me.

As we approached the two hour mark, I’d seen Bill on 16 and Nick on 20 both net decent fish while Hollywood on peg 10 to my left had landed several carp and was wishing it wasn’t silvers only! I’d been feeding maggots across since the start and as I hadn’t added to my three fish, it was time to have my first look across at 14.5 metres. I laid the rig in and as it settled it went straight under with a nice roach taking the single pinkie.

Next chuck, a little dink resulted in a decent skimmer, then a missed bite followed by another roach and I thought I was in for really nice day. Shipping out again, the float just sat there and I couldn’t get a bite! Being patient, the float has eventually gone under and I had another roach. I did miss a few bites and pulled out of a roach but it was fishing really hard.

Dan and Hollywood to my left and Rob B on 4 still hadn’t caught a silver while Toby on 2 had a chublet and a small perch. I’d seen Bill land a couple more decent skimmers and although I wasn’t a million miles away, I needed at least another skimmer and it hasn’t happened. I was still getting occasional indications but the last three fish I hooked were carp although I did miss two bites just before the all out.

The weigh in wouldn’t take long on our side as Toby had chucked back and the others hadn’t caught silvers. My six roach, two perch and a skimmer went 3lb 6oz and then we headed round the other side, Bill had four decent skimmers for 4lb 3oz so it was actually quite close. Alex didn’t weigh on 18, Nick had a nice perch of 1lb 2oz, Zooner had two fish for 8oz and then Allen H on 24 had caught a skimmer of 1lb 3oz which was enough for third place.

1 – Bill Hopping (Summerhayes) – 4lb 3oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 3lb 6oz
3 – Allen Hurley (Summerhayes) – 1lb 3oz

I picked up £40 for second and the Nugget-O-Meter had a great day with £2 each from Nick P and me plus pounds off Hollywood, Toby, Dan and Zooner taking the total to £81.

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 – Summerhayes

Coming soon – Lots more match reports

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