Acorn Fishery – Short Pole Match – 5th May 2025

Bank Holiday Monday was a short pole match at Acorn and I really enjoy this format, it’s something a little different and good fun. There was a great turnout of 31 anglers including Tony Rixon who I haven’t seen for ages. Foxy announced the draw and I pulled out 25 over by the concrete bridge, an area I seem to frequent a lot. There was a rather chilly wind and I was regretting leaving my fleece at home. Paul Faiers was on 27 with the aforementioned Tony down on 29 (typical, don’t see him for a long time and then can’t get away from him!) so it would be an entertaining day if nothing else.

One of the nice things about only being able to use four sections of pole is that you can’t overcomplicate things and I set up a couple of rigs for top four straight out and a top kit plus one line angled to the left. On the whistle I fed the (slightly) longer line with a nugget of groundbait while the short swim received half a pot of maggots. Starting straight out I thought it might take a little while to catch but a positive bite after only a few minutes resulted in a 1.5lb tench which was a great opener.

A nice skimmer followed quite quickly and I was getting regular indications, with an hour gone I had 2 tench, 2 skimmers and an ide for around 5lb plus a couple of carp. The second sixty minutes was similar and a 4-5lb tench helped me up to 13lb. Tony and Paul were struggling although every time I looked to my right, Duffers on 22 was netting a fish and I thought he was bagging on silvers.

My top four line was slowing up and I was hooking a few carp so after three hours I had a look short but waited ages for a bite only to then lose what felt like a decent skimbob. Paul started catching carp down his edges although Tony was still struggling and his earlier optimism that the fish would follow the wind seemed to be misplaced! My catch rate was ticking along with odd fish from the longer line but it would need to improve if I was going to do a decent weight.

With around an hour to go, I came back in on the top three line and had a 2lb skimmer first chuck, there were loads of blows coming up and obviously a few fish there as I had another five skimmers, a roach, an ide and several carp in the remaining time. I finished up with 26 fish which I thought would go around 30lb but I didn’t think it would be enough to do any good.

Tony had the scales for our side and started at peg 18, when he got to Neil next door, I wandered up to have a peak at the board and Duffers had weighed 30lb 12oz of silvers which was less than I thought he had, so this could be close. I was next and my carp went 37lb 13oz before I pulled my silvers nets out and the display settled on 32lb 2oz, so just one fish in it! Paul had an excellent 117lb 13oz and Tony was the last peg in our section and weighed 39lb 7oz.

I had a another enjoyable day catching tench, skimmers, ide and roach for 32lb 2oz

Back at the results and Howard Green had the top weight on the day with 141lb 5oz from peg 37 followed closely by Martin Thomas on 8 who had 140lb 4oz. I won the silvers taking home a nice £60 envelope and Duffers was second.

1 – Howard Green (Acorn) – 141lb 5oz
2 – Martin Thomas (Acorn) – 140lb 4oz

Sections
A – Mark Walsh (Acorn) – 93lb 3oz
B – Martin Rayet (Acorn) – 96lb 6oz
C – Paul Faiers (Acorn) – 117lb 13oz
D – Kev Perry (Acorn) – 104lb 6oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 32lb 2oz
2 – Darren Duffield (Acorn) – 30lb 12oz

Another lovely days fishing at Acorn with loads of close weights and as always it’s a good laugh being in Tony and Paul’s company!

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