Summerhayes – Open – 4th May 2025

On Sunday it was back at Summerhayes for a match on Sellicks which I haven’t fished for ages. There were 14 anglers booked in for this one which is a good number for the lake as we’d all have a bit of room. My favourite peg is number 16 and I came close when I pulled out 15 with the swims either side vacant.

I set up rigs to fish down the middle at 10 metres and then across at 13 and 14.5 metres, Pete got us underway and I fed the shorter lines with groundbait before starting to ping maggots across. Alex over on peg 11 flew out of the blocks with several decent skimmers while I couldn’t get a bite! I normally like to leave going over for at least two hours (preferably longer) but with an hour gone and not even indication, I felt I had to have a look at 13 metres before falling too far behind Alex.

To be honest I didn’t get the instant response I’d hoped for and it took a while to get a bite which of course I missed and then I bumped off two roach as my match stubbornly refused to spark into life! I then hooked a fish which wasn’t going crazy but was too energetic to be a carp and a nice perch around a pound finally opened my account. My next fish was a decent skimmer and by swapping between two areas I began catching steadily.

To be honest, there were obviously a lot of fish there and it just got better and better, along with some nice skimmers, I also had another perch and cracking crucian that was nudging 2lb. From what I could see only odd fish were coming out to my left and while Alex was still catching regularly, he was netting quite a few carp. I pulled out of several skimmers, got bitten off by a big eel that went to ground and also hooked another good perch that I was a bit too careful with and it snagged me on the inside and came off!

Bites started to slow towards the end of the match so I added the 14.5 metre section resulting in two skimmers in quick succession and I managed odd fish up to the final whistle. I finished up with 27 skimmers, 2 perch, 1 crucian and a roach (plus I landed 3 carp), just a lovely days fishing.

First to weigh was Steve Collins on peg 2 who had bagged up with 107lb 4oz of mainly carp, Mark Leahy had 55lb 7oz but lost a fair few, Kev ‘O on 5 weighed 29lb 8oz, Andy E had 33lb 12oz and Rob B on 9 weighed 7lb 5oz of silvers.

Steve C had the top weight on the day with 107lb 4oz of mainly carp

Alex was next and he’d actually switched to fishing for carp and had 70lb 4oz (including 9lb 13oz of silvers), Rog C weighed 18lb 12oz and then my fish went 32lb 4oz (which I’m pretty sure is my second biggest weight of silvers at Summerhayes).

Alex switched to ‘the darkside’ to finish second with 70lb 4oz

I had an amazing day to win the silvers with 32lb 4oz of skimmers, perch, a crucian and a roach

Sir Bill weighed 46lb 10oz and then the next couple of pegs chucked back, Zooner had 7lb 9oz of skimmers on 21 but was pipped for second in the silvers by Tom R who 9lb which included a sizeable eel.

Zooner had some decent skimmers for 7lb 9oz

1 – Steve Collins (Summerhayes) – 107lb 4oz
2 – Alex Kerr (Summerhayes) – 70lb 4oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 32lb 4oz
2 – Tom R (Summerhayes) – 9lb

I had a awesome days fishing and picked up £50 for winning the silvers but the peg was definitely worth a lot more on the day.

Norts gave me a £1 at breakfast and one from Zooner helped the Nugget-O-Meter reach £248.

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