Summerhayes – Open – 23rd March 2025

After a lovely day and lots of bites on Saturday I was hoping for more of the same the following day on Longs at Summerhayes. A great turnout of 25 anglers and it was fantastic to see Zooner who was back after a recent op and we were also joined by Russ Hamilton (Hilton) who had enjoyed his first visit fishing Sellicks recently.

Pete announced the draw and even though I was fairly near the top of the list, most of the pegs in the 30’s had already gone by the time I was called up. As I delved my hand into the bucket, there were still a few good ones left and as I opened my fingers I’d have loved to have seen the number 13 staring back at me. Needless to say that didn’t happen and 20 on the bottom bank really wasn’t where I wanted to be, it used to be a great area for silvers but so far this year it’s been tough.

For company I had Alex to my left on 23 which is a peg I really don’t like and Heardy to my right on 19 with Roy along from him on 17. I set up a 0.1 gram Elsa for two lines at top five plus a 0.2 gram Bobbie for across to the island at 13 metres. We got underway and I fed my short lines with a little groundbait plus some pinkies and began pinging some maggots across. Alex had a little tench first chuck and after a few minutes my float went under and I had a small roach to get off the mark.

Swapping between the short lines I had a really nice hour or so catching ide, roach, small skimmers and a couple of diddy tench although I did pull out of three skimbobs. Alex was also catching well and I could see Roy regularly netting what looked like half decent skimmers. Then I hooked a bigger fish which straight away had that characteristic fight of an eel, mindful of the 0.08mm hooklength I took my time and managed to get the net under the tail and at nearly 2lb it was a handy bonus.

I’ve stayed on the top five lines and it was steady fishing with some more ide, odd skimmers, another little tench and a gorgeous crucian around 8oz. After three and a half hours, my short lines were fading so it was time to have a look across where I’d been pinging maggots since the start. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped and although I was getting bites, it was from tiny little chublets and the odd roach. I did have one 6oz chublet and pulled out of a slightly better fish but stuck at it as Alex and Roy seemed to have slowed up as well and at least I was putting something in the net.

Then Alex had to go and spoil things by landing a decent eel and there was now nothing between us. I noticed a few little bubbles on the short lines so dropped back in on it, after a few minutes I had a lovely slow bite and when I struck it was obviously a carp rather than the eel I’d hoped for. It didn’t give me too many problems before I netted a five pounder, I then landed two more in quick succession much to Heardy’s disgust as he was fishing for them and only had three or four.

I spent the remaining time across and managed a few more little chublets, ide and two half decent roach to finish up with 67 fish which I thought might just give me double figures if they averaged 2oz apiece plus the eel. After packing up, I went to give Pete a hand with the weigh in starting with Bill ‘The Paste’ on peg 36 (apparently he just leaves his kit there now and knows all the fish by name!), he had some decent skimmers for 7lb 3oz. Zooner on 39 was next and weighed 6lb 10oz of silvers, Kev O’ had 16lb 9oz of mainly carp on 3 and then Eric on the golden peg (5) weighed 15lb 12oz.

Big Bad Bob on 7 had 8lb 15oz, Tom didn’t weigh on 10 and then it was Russ, now apparently he’d bagged up yet was admitting to 6lb and even said he’d be astonished if he had more than 8lb, you get the picture! He pulled his net out and had a nice net of skimmers plus a big 2lb+ eel for 12lb 12oz (not too far out then although I think you need to work on your ‘astonished’ face!). Rob B chucked back on 12 and then Chedz went into the overall lead with 45lb 1oz on 13.

Glynn was on 15 and had 5lb 9oz which included two decent eels and he lost two as well! Then it was Roy who’d really struggled (!) for 10lb 4oz of skimmers, Heardy weighed 20lb 7oz and then my three carp went 14lb 15oz before my extremely accurate estimate (cough, cough!) was literally only ounces out as Pete called it at 11lb 9oz. Alex was next and had a good net of fish and it was going to be close, luckily (for me), the scales settled on 10lb 13oz.

It had been a struggle on the next few pegs before Adie Bishop on 30 went into second spot with 27lb 10oz, Nick P had some big skimmers for 9lb 8oz but was cursing losing a big eel at the net and Dan T had 8lb 5oz of silvers on 34. Dave Romain was next and he had 5lb 6oz of silvers (which included another big eel!) and his carp went 47lb for a total of 52lb 6oz to win on the day.

1 – Dave Romain (Colmic) – 52lb 6oz
2 – Nick Chedzoy (Summerhayes) – 45lb 1oz
3 – Adie Bishop (Summerhayes) – 27lb 10oz
4 – Martin Heard (Tiverton) – 20lb 7oz

Silvers
1 – Russell Hilton (Colmic) – 12lb 12oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 11lb 9oz
3 – Alex Kerr (Summerhayes) – 10lb 13oz

I picked up £39 for second in the silvers and as always it was a really close frame for the silvers and there was only one fish between the top two overall. Then the overall weights dropped off a bit and I would have even sneaked in the frame with my carp!

It was interesting to see so many eels hooked, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many come out in a single match. Such fine margins as they were a big bonus today and made the difference for the top three weights, without them Roy would probably have won! Russ did well to win on his first match on Longs and is already looking forward to his next visit.

Thanks to £1 donations from Nick P and Oscar plus nuggets from Dan T and Zooner saw the charity total hit £190.

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 – Acorn

Coming soon – Lots more match reports

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