Summerhayes – 5th May 2024

Note – I’m not sure what’s going on with Facebook but they removed my last post linking to the blog so if you commented and I didn’t get chance to reply, I apologise. I have queried it with FB but I’m not holding my breath it will be resolved anytime soon!

Sunday we were at Summerhayes for a Stoke club match on Sellicks, there was a great turnout of 21 anglers although it would mean we were all rather cosy with most of the pegs occupied. A fair few of us met for breakfast at the bowling club before heading to the fishery. With another match on Longs, the car park was already pretty rammed and there was a fair bit of vehicle Tetris going on!

At the draw bag I was hoping for a middle peg, preferably on the far side and for once my defective arm behaved itself and put me on number 20 which was spot on, just where I wanted to be. I was in good company too with the Grand Wiz to my right and Dave Chidzoy on 21.

I set up a Preston Innovations F1 Maggot to fish two lines at 10 metres plus a couple of 0.2 gram Bobbies for the far side at 14.5 metres. The side tray was nice and simple with lots of maggots and some Bait-Tech Special G F1 and Dark groundbait.

GW got us up and running with a very musical toot on his whistle although he ran out of puff towards the end and sounded more like a set deflated bagpipes! I fed two lines at 10 metres with gb and maggots, the usual sort of thing, one negative and the other with a bit more grub and also began pinging some maggots over to the island.

The whistle warbler was into a carp nearly straight away but it came off at the net and was possibly foul hooked. It took 25 mins for my first bite which came on the positive line resulting in a nice skimmer to get me on the scoreboard. Two more in quick succession was nice before I swapped to the other line and after a little wait, had my first skimmer from there. I had one more from the right hand line to finish a decent first sixty minutes.

Dave on my left had flown out of the blocks and was bagging with a steady procession of carp being deposited in his nets. GW had landed a couple and there were a few fish coming out looking up the pond. After my good start, bites had slowed up but I stuck with it as I like to leave the long lines for at at least two hours before going across. I did have a couple of nice roach to keep the catch rate ticking over.

With bites on the shorter lines petering out, I was itching to go across and first put in, a positive bite saw loads of six Slip exit the pole tip before I netted a lovely skimmer around a pound. Three more in as many chucks was a fantastic response although I was expecting carp to spoil the party at any moment! I had another decent skimmer and then pulled out of one which slowed things up so at the halfway point I was doing ok but decided to rest it and have another look on the 10 metre lines.

No bites but back on the longer lines, a trio of skimmers in as many chucks suggested the rest had done it some good! To be honest the remaining two hours was really nice fishing, I was getting regular bites from skimmers, the odd decent roach and even had two little 4oz chublets. Carp weren’t too much of a problem(I think they were all in Dave’s swim!) and I’ve only hooked three all day, landing one lump around 8lb.

I finished up with 28 fish and thought I’d done alright on my side but couldn’t tell how they’d done on the opposite bank so would have to wait for the results as we had a set of scales on each side. The clubs photobombing Scouser, Craig had the responsibility of weighing us in (God help us!) and I rather stupidly offered to assist (God help me!).

We started at the far end with John Dursley on 14 who set the bar with 40lb 1oz, Dave Nash had 19lb 9oz which included 5lb 2oz of silvers, Terry ‘The Toast’ didn’t weigh on 16 and then Nick Chedzoy had 36lb 12oz of carp. Priv had packed up and I’m not sure he realises our matches are six hours long yet! The Grand Wiz had done well just pipping Chedz to go into second place with 36lb 15oz.

Then it was me, the carp was 8lb 6oz and my silvers weighed 17lb 11oz, Dave had shown his class and after all his nets were totted up, his total of 135lb 12oz would be more than enough to blitz the match. Dave Phillips weighed 5lb 12oz of silvers, Oscar had 9lb 15oz of skimmers and 19lb 1oz of carp and then Craig was last to weigh and had 31lb 8oz.

Back at the results and Fieldy had the top weight on the other side with 42lb 2oz from peg 1 which was second overall followed by Andy Saunders with 24lb 9oz from peg 11 and Nick P who had 19lb 6oz which included 8lb 6oz of silvers. Thanks to Rob Cox for the photos*

1 – Dave Chidzoy (Stoke) – 135lb 12oz
2 – Graham Field (Stoke) – 42lb 2oz
3 – John Dursley (Enterprise Angling) – 40lb 1oz
4 – Chris White (Stoke) – 36lb 15oz

Sections
A – Andy Saunders (Sharp MG) – 24lb 9oz
B – Nick Chedzoy (Stoke) – 36lb 12oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Against Men and Fish) – 17lb 11oz
2 – Rob Wylde (Stoke) – 9lb 15oz

I picked up £30 for winning the silvers and really enjoyed that, the lake fished well considering nearly all the pegs were in and it was a well run match with great bunch of lads.

The Nugget-O-Meter did really well with loads of donations from Nick Payne (£3), Norts (£3), me (£3), Rob Cox (£2), Craig Lyttle (£1), Terry Morgan (£1) and Rob Wylde (£1) all kindly adding to the pot which now stands at £189.

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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