Summerhayes – Silvers Open – 10th May 2025

A double-header at Summerhayes this weekend kicking off with a silvers match on Sellicks. After meeting Nick and Parker ‘The Pole’ for breakfast, we arrived in plenty of time and it looked like the carp were spawning with loads of activity at the near end and I said I really didn’t fancy peg 2. Of course that meant when it was my turn to draw, fate selected that very peg for me!

I set up rigs to fish a couple of lines at 10 metres and across to the island which was only 11.5 metres away and much like the last match on here, I spent an hour swapping between the two shorter lines and never had a bite! There were already people walking about and by all accounts it was fishing really hard with Alex up on 12, the only angler to have caught anything with two decent skimmers.

With sixty minutes gone and nothing in the net, I’ve had my first look over where I’d been regularly pinging maggots, a further ten minutes elapsed before I had a bite, which I missed! Next chuck I lost a carp that snapped me and things didn’t improve when I finally hooked a skimmer only for it to come off shipping back! At least I was getting a few indications and then I connected with a fish that I knew wasn’t a carp but was pulling too hard to be a skimmer and a nice perch of a pound was very welcome.

Not long after I was into a fish that I was sure would be another perch only for a 8-10oz chub to double my tally! Over the next couple of hours, I had another decent perch along with a smaller one around 4oz although, rather annoyingly, I’d also pulled out of a good fish. At the halfway point, I was doing ok as apparently out of 11 anglers, Alex and me were the only ones to have caught silvers so far.

Heading into the closing stages, I’d added two more nice perch and a skimmer but as Alex apparently had six decent skimmers, I needed to find another fish or two. As per normal carp began to be a pain in the last hour or so but in amongst them, I did manage to catch one more perch and as long as Mr Kerr hadn’t added to his tally, this could be close.

The weigh wasn’t going to take long as there were only four people left with nets in (Zooner did catch a roach but chucked back). My eight fish (six perch, a chub and a skimmer) went 6lb 6oz and then Alex was next and there wasn’t much in it but the scales read 6lb 11oz as he took the lead. The guy on 14 had several smaller fish for 1lb 13oz but then Parker ‘The Pole’ had two decent skimmers on 16 for 2lb 10oz and third place.

I had six perch, a skimmer and a chub for 6lb 6oz

Alex won with 6lb 11oz of skimmers

Parker ‘The Pole’ was third with two skimmers for 2lb 10oz

1 – Alex Kerr (Summerhayes) – 6lb 11oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 6lb 6oz
3 – Steve Parker (Ilton) – 2lb 10oz

Back at the results I picked up £48 for second place and then had an awesome surprise when Sally came out of the kitchen area with cupcakes complete with candles for my birthday (it was actually yesterday although I may have mentioned it once or twice!), what a kind gesture and it made my day, thank you Sally and Pete. I have to also thank Nick for buying me breakfast, Steve P for picking up and paying for my bait and the literally hundreds and hundreds of people who wished me Happy Birthday on Facebook, you made an old man feel special for a day! I actually had a day off work on Friday and went to see a mate in Exeter who treated me to lunch and we had a nice catch up so a really lovely couple of days and I felt properly spoilt, thank you everyone!

Thankfully there were only 4 candles as the number corresponding to my age would have been a considerable fire risk!

£2 each from Nick P and me plus a pound off Zooner took the Nugget-O-Meter to £253.

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 – Summerhayes

Coming soon – Lots more match reports

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Posted by Jamie Rich

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