Todber Manor – Silvers Open – 5th April 2025

After doing well in my last two matches fishing the maggot feeder at Todber, I was looking forward to having another go on Saturday. When draw time arrived, I waited until there were only a couple of tickets left as it’s been working so well although I felt sure it had to bite me on the bum at some point! Adrian Dew asked if I wanted a nugget on it and we both selected one of the two remaining pegs, he was on 75 which has been rather hit and miss lately, I opened mine and I’d only drawn 69, an absolute rocket ship of a peg, a proper bunghole!

I set up the usual rigs for 13 metres along with my feeder rod and having a few chucks with a bomb to clip up before the start, I was pretty accurate and feeling rather pleased with myself! Lots of maggots and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark were hopefully the successful combination for today. My neighbours were Karl A on 70 with Lee Jan on my left. Nick P and Parker ‘The Pole’ were on 67 and 66 respectively.

On the whistle I fed the pole lines before starting on the feeder and it didn’t take long to start catching some nice ide although I was missing loads of ‘unmissable’ bites and it sounded like it was the same for Lee and Karl who were both on the feeder as well. I had a good first two hours where I probably put around 15lb in the net but did have a few ‘no balls’ where I hooked the far bank and then had the line go behind the spool which took a while to sort out and my match (much like my line!) was beginning to unravel.

Karl started getting some big skimmers and when Lee came in on his pole line and began catching well, I decided to have a look at 13 metres and was expecting it to be good but it was actually a resounding flop with just a few small fish. Back on the feeder I had a run of ide but with Lee, Karl and Dan P all bagging up with bream/skimmers I was falling even further behind. In a bid to make something happen I fed three pots of groundbait and dead maggots at 14.5 metres. After leaving it to settle for ten minutes I went on it but only had one half decent skimmer and was running out of ideas fast.

Back on the feeder for the last hour I added very little to my net while Karl caught steadily up until the end of the match. I ended up with 38 fish and knew I hadn’t done very well today, cocked up a flier and been battered both sides (like a chip shop sausage). The scales started at the near end and there were several double figure weights before Nick had 22lb 1oz, Lee weighed an excellent 27lb 12oz which included some big skimmers and then my fish went 19lb 14oz.

Karl had a lovely net of fish for 43lb 10oz and then Dan weighed exactly the same next door, Ant K had 18lb 5oz, Guy on 73 weighed 17lb and then the ever consistent Andy A went into third place with 38lb 4oz. Last but not least was Adrian Dew who had 16lb 8oz which meant he had to pose for another nugget handing over ceremony!

1 – Dan Ponting (Todber) – 43lb 10oz
1 – Karl Aman (Todber) – 43lb 10oz
3 – Andy Akehurst (Todber) – 38lb 4oz

Fantastic silvers weights again and it’s really nice fishing, no excuses from me as I’ve drawn one of the best pegs on the lake and not done it justice. A great start saw me put around 15lb in the net but then the next three hours I’ve only caught around 5lb while around me they’ve bagged up and I didn’t know what to do next.

£2 from Nick P and me plus Adrian’s nugget saw the Nugget-O-Meter rise to £205.

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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