When the clocks go forward, Foxy changes the format of his matches slightly, the draw time is a bit later and he pays the top five (no sections) along with one in the silvers (and you can pick up in both). 27 anglers fishing today and as per usual when it was time to draw I was hoping to pull out 38 or 40 and actually came very close with 37 which is a great peg. Bunghole Bob lived up to his name and was over the moon with peg 5 as he skipped across the bridge onto the island.
As people began writing their names on the sheet, somebody said they had peg 3 which Chris said shouldn’t have been in and a re-draw was called, I was gutted and Bob certainly didn’t have the same spring in his step as he wheeled his kit back across the bridge. Of course quite a few people were happy at the chance of drawing a better peg second time round. Nick got my dream peg 40, Bob wasn’t impressed with 18 on the far side while I got number 7 which Glenn C said can be good for silvers. Duffers was the lucky angler to replace Bob on peg 5.
I set up a couple of Preston Innovations F1 Maggots and a little 0.2 gram rig to fish multiple lines. On the whistle I fed groundbait (Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark) at top four and 11.5 metres straight out, big potted maggots at 10 metres angled to the left in open water and began pinging maggots across to the island.
Kicking off across I started catching some nice ide along with a couple of skimmers and two tench plus five carp. Bites slowed up after two hours so I moved to the 11.5 metre line and had another run of fish including some nice tench and skimmers up to 3lb. As we passed the halfway point I had my first look at 10 metres in the open water and it was a bite a chuck from ide, skimmers, roach, two more nice tench and an eel.
There were loads of bubbles coming up on the short line and with two hours left I couldn’t resist it any longer. I started catching some lovely tench with several fish around 4-5lb which I put in my second silvers net and when I got to around 25lb, I chucked back my five carp to use that net for silvers with half an hour to go.
In the last thirty minutes I added several more smaller tench plus a couple of skimmers and was playing a tench when the final whistle went. I finished up with 78 fish and it had been just a lovely days fishing where I’d only pulled out of a couple of fish and after landing those five carp early, only foulhooked one more all match.
Chris Harrison on peg 6 was first to weigh on our side and had 161lb 13oz, then it was me and my last net weighed 10lb 9oz, the second one went 27lb 1oz and my first net was 33lb 9oz for a 71lb 3oz total which was only one fish shy of my best ever silvers weight.
I caught all day to weigh 71lb 3oz of silvers
Back at the results and the lake had fished it’s head off, Simon Stacey had a massive 228lb 2oz from peg 4 to win on the day and despite Bunghole Bob’s re-draw disappointment, he did well on peg 18 to finish second with 201lb 3oz and then there were a string of big weights. I won the silvers ahead of Mark Broomsgrove who had a brilliant 61lb 7oz of silvers on peg 22.
1 – Simon Stacey (Acorn) – 228lb 2oz
2 – Bob Gullick (Acorn) – 201lb 3oz
3 – Kev Perry (Acorn) – 184lb 10oz
4 – Nick Chedzoy (Acorn) – 181lb 13oz
5 – Glenn Calvert (Acorn) – 178lb 4oz
Silvers
Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 71lb 3oz
A nice pick up of £65 rounded off a nearly perfect day although it was all a bit of a rush to then get back for Stoke AA’s presentation night (see next post).
£2 each from Nick P and me took the Nugget-O-Meter up to £212.
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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