Revels Fishery – Open – 19th December 2023

I haven’t been down to Revels for a while so booked a day off to fish the Tuesday open and met Parker ‘The Pole’ for breakfast before heading to the fishery. 19 anglers fishing today and as it was also a Xmas match, complimentary hot drinks and bacon rolls were laid on which were very much appreciated and Bob C brought on Xmas hats for everyone! Photo credit – Revels*

Jason announced the draw and we were on Main, Canal and Dead Tree lakes and when my name was called, peg 51 on the latter was pulled out for me, a decent area for silvers and Steve P got 14 on Main again. Just for a change it was chucking it down and we were in for another soggy day! There were only two others on Dead Tree, John Bass on 49 and Roy ‘The Bomb’ Worth on 48. Bob Chrisp was on Canal peg 70 and wanted a nugget on silvers.

I set up my usual 0.2 gram Bobbies to fish two lines at 10 metres and a 0.3 gram F1 Carbon Slim with spread shot to fish down the edge on a top kit. The side tray for today contained maggots, disco pinkies and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark.

On the whistle I fed modest amounts of gb plus a few pinkies on the top two line to my left and 10 metres straight out and at the same distance angled towards the dead tree. Starting short with single pinkie on the hook, it took a little before I had a bite from a little perch to get me up and running. It wasn’t fast and furious but I was getting enough bites to keep me interested and after 40 minutes I had ten fish (perch, little roach and a gudgeon) for probably 12oz.

John was fishing long and catching roach while Roy had landed a couple of decent skimmers on the tip. I’ve gone out to 10 metres and started getting some 1-2oz roach and although I couldn’t seem to catch any quality, I was happy enough putting fish in the net as weights around 5-6lb have been framing in recent matches.

Swapping between the two 10 metre lines was working quite well and when bites slowed up, going half a section past the feed would result in a couple of quick fish and I had a cracking 8-10oz roach. There wasn’t much between John and me but then he had a decent skimmer of 12oz or so which I was sure edged him in front.

I then hooked what felt like another big roach but as I shipped back at an angle, it went round some crap on the inside and everything went solid. Despite lots of faffing, I got my rig back minus the fish and I was sure that was going to cost me today. John latched into a carp and on light gear it led him a merry dance, while he was playing it, I had another nice roach of 8oz and one of 4oz but also started hooking a few carp.

After a long scrap, John did well to land his fish that looked to be getting on for 7lb. Going into the last part of the match, I was still getting odd fish and landed my first carp which was half the size of John’s. The rain had been relentless and when the all out was signalled, I was pretty moist! Jason soon arrived with the scales and Roy had done well weighing 36lb 9oz (which included 2lb 9oz of silvers), John’s carp was 6lb 10oz and he had 3lb 15oz of silvers. My single carp was 2lb 14oz and the silvers went 5lb 3oz and I was still sure that decent roach I lost was going to come back and haunt me.

Jason headed down to weigh Canal while we finished packing up, I took my kit back to the car and passed Paul Wyatt who was on Main peg 20, he was admitting to 5lb so I was pretty sure he’d beaten me. When the scales arrived at Paul who was last to weigh, he had 7lb 7oz to comfortably win the silvers, I ended up second but only just as Neil Saxby on Canal peg 66 weighed 5lb 2oz! Steve Lovell also wasn’t far off on peg 9, he’d fished for carp for three hours and then had 4lb 10oz of silvers in the remaining two.

Overall Steve Crowford had the top weight with an excellent 53lb 11oz from peg 6, Trevor Holmes was second on peg 8 with 36lb 13oz and Roy was third. At the results a hot drink was very welcome and there was a prize table, I picked up a box of Matchmakers and some shortbread plus I had £30 for second in the silvers and a pound off Bob C. Thanks to Dean Hodder for the photos**

1 – Steve Crowford (Revels) – 53lb 11oz
2 – Trevor Holmes (Revels) – 36lb 13oz
3 – Roy Worth (Revels) – 36lb 9oz

Silvers
1 – Paul Wyatt (Revels) – 7lb 7oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Against Men and Fish) – 5lb 3oz
3 – Neil Saxby (Revels) – 5lb 2oz

Thanks to Bob’s pound the Nugget-O-Meter is now up to £26.

In case I don’t get chance to finish the next couple of posts in time I’ll take the opportunity now to wish everyone who reads the blog A Very Merry Xmas.

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

Check Out – My last match

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