Summerhayes – Open – 10th March 2024

On Sunday it was back to Longs on Summerhayes and after doing me proud yesterday, I was hoping my drawing arm would continue to behave! Another good turnout of 19 booked in for today and with Pete away for the day, Roy was in charge of proceedings. The golden ball was drawn and it was number 13, great for silvers and one of my favourite pegs.

People were called up in the order they’d booked in and I was around halfway down the list, Nick got 19 which is another of the pegs I fancied and then it was me, the bonus peg was still in the bucket and I only went and drew it! The two silvers anglers in form at the moment are Toby ‘The Terminator’ Burrell and Roy ‘The Rock’ Hughes with the latter fresh from winning the previous day with 15lb from peg 27 and on a run of four consecutive victories.

Toby drew Roy’s swim from the day before while Mr Hughes was on 35 and both were happy with their pegs. My swim looked lovely and for company I had Chris Morris on my right with Glynn on peg 10, another decent silvers peg.

I set up two 0.2 gram Bobbies to fish two lines at 11.5 metres and across to the island at 14.5 metres. The side tray for today contained red maggots, disco pinkies, micros, 4mm expanders and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 Dark.

On the whistle I fed micros in front, micros and gb angled to the right and then pinged some maggots across. First put in with a 4mm expander, I got off to a great start with a 10oz skimmer after a few minutes. After a couple of little dinks (the ones you’re supposed to hit but I sit there like a lemon waiting for the float to go under!) I switched to the other 11.5 metre line and the float buried straight away. It felt like a decent skimmer but it came off shipping back and then next put in the same thing happened with a smaller fish.

I was getting quite a few indications and after an hour I had three or four decent skimmers and a couple of smaller ones. Chris next door was catching carp well fishing across to the island and he also had a couple of skimmers which hopefully was a good sign for when I went across later. Going into the second sixty minutes I was still getting odd fish and as far as I could tell, I was doing okay. Nick over on 19 was having carp problems and Terminator Toby who was directly in my eye line was getting a few fish but not bagging.

I had to stop fishing to answer the call of nature so asked Glynn how he was doing, he replied about 6lb which by my reckoning put him about 2lb ahead of me at this stage. After a decent start my bites were dwindling and I also had that weird phenomenon where I’ve missed a bite only for a big skimmer to come flying out the water! I could also see Toby still catching fairly steadily so with two and a half hours gone, I felt I had to go across to the island.

A small roach was first and then I bumped a better fish before catching a lovely roach pushing 12oz, I had a couple of nice skimmers but was also hooking the odd carp as well (although not as many as Nick who was having a torrid time of it!). Adding the dolly butt and going to the left and right of the feed resulted in a few more but I was having to chase them around so I decided to rest it and came back to 11.5 metres.

A nice skimmer on double pinkie was welcome before a lumpy carp towed me around the peg and that was enough of that. Back to island at 14.5 and 15 metres but it was slow going and I could see Toby still landing fish and he was pulling away. With around an hour to go, I even got my rarely used 16 metre section out and went further across. I had two more nice skimmers but also bumped one and struck into what felt like a decent fish but as I shipped back it snagged me solid and I eventually came back with big branch and no fish!

On the whistle I ended up with around 30 fish for 8-10lb but knew there would be no bumper payday for me as I hadn’t beaten Toby and Glynn was admitting to 10lb so would have more than that. I packed up and went to give Roy a hand with the weigh in, Kev O on 39 had 28lb 8oz, Jim J weighed 26lb 13oz and then Heardy went into the lead with 55lb 7oz on peg 3.

Dan T had 29lb which included the best silvers weight so far of 8lb 8oz, Martin A then weighed 69lb 12oz before Glynn had 12lb 8oz of silvers. Chris had caught all day and his several nets totalled 92lb, my silvers went 11lb 5oz which was a little more than I thought but would still be well short as Toby was admitting to 12lb and Roy said he had 14lb.

Baz B on 16 weighed 35lb 8oz, Rog C had 19lb 1oz and then Nick had 43lb 12oz including 5lb 2oz of silvers, McKenzie weighed 4lb 12oz of silvers and then Toby’s estimate wasn’t too far out as he had a nice net of skimmers and three tench for 15lb 15oz. Bill ‘The Paste’ weighed 49lb 4oz, Hollywood went into third place with 65lb 12oz on peg 30 and Big Bad Bob had 20lb 8oz.

Oscar on 33 had 13lb 8oz of silvers and then Roy had a brilliant 22lb 10oz of skimmers for his fifth win on the trot.

1 – Chris Morris (Summerhayes) – 92lb
2 – Martin Addicott (Summerhayes) – 69lb 12oz
3 – Ian Williams (Summerhayes) – 65lb 12oz

Silvers
1 – Roy Hughes (Summerhayes) – 22lb 10oz
2 – Toby Burrell (Team Army) – 15lb 15oz
3 – Rob Wylde (Summerhayes) – 13lb 8oz

So after the high of yesterday, I drove home feeling really deflated today, although there were several really close weights and I wasn’t a million miles off second, I’m not getting it right at all. The top four all fished pellets whereas I’m not confident with them and keep going back to maggots. Certainly Roy and Toby have got it sorted and are proving very hard to beat so fair play to them.

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

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Next up – Summerhayes

Coming soon – Lots more match reports

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