With quite a few of the regulars fishing festivals, there was depleted turnout for this one, even venue expert Adrian Dew was absent due to feeling under the weather (probably still counting all his winnings!) so at least we had a chance this week.
JC announced the draw and as everybody delved in they all seemed to be fairly happy with their pegs. I hung back per usual and with just two tickets left, Pete N grabbed one which turned out to be a good peg in the shape of 71 and as I started to open mine I had a horrible feeling I knew what was coming and sure enough the numbers 6 and 3 were staring back at me! Now the great man himself (Mr Dew) had won off it recently so it can do it but good results tend to be the exception rather than the rule (getting my excuses in early!).
I had loads of room with Nick P the closest angler to me on 65 so hopefully the extra space would help. Along with a waggler rod, I set up rigs for top kit plus one and 11.5 metres. On the whistle I started short and had a couple of tiny roach on maggot while Nick had a better skimmer on the pole fishing further out. Switching to the waggler and corn I had a couple of 6-8oz skimmers quite quickly but then waited ages for the next bite which I missed.
Norts turned up to see how we were doing and reported it was fishing quite hard and nobody was really bagging with just odd better fish coming out. I tried corn on the short line and had a skimmer but also lost one, 11.5 metres was a waste of time with just a few roach. Nick was catching some nice skimmers whereas I was only getting the odd fish and suffering the usual missed bite madness.
I decided to try hair rigging the corn with a speed stop as it had been in the back of my mind and several people had suggested it after reading my recent Todber reports. Although I was still missing a few bites, it definitely helped and on those occasions where the float went and a skimmer leapt out the water, every one was hooked, so well worth playing around with but I wasn’t really getting enough bites to form any concrete conclusions yet.
At the all out, I only had 18 skimmers (with none of the proper ones), 2 ide and a few roach, the scales started with me and my fish went 11lb which I knew would be no good today. Nick had a nice net of skimmers for 16lb 12oz, Jim P on 67 had 8lb and then Roy W went into the lead with 18lb 8oz. Photos courtesy of Todber Manor*
I only had 11lb but at least I looked super stylish in my hat!*
Nick P weighed 16lb 12oz of mainly skimmers*
Roy W had 18lb 8oz on peg 69*
Pete N was next and had caught some decent skimmers on the tip for 20lb 2oz, Parker ‘The Pole’ weighed 7lb 11oz and Lee Jan on 75 had several of the big brown ones for 21lb 10oz and first place on the day.
Pete N was second on the day with 20lb 2oz*
Lee Jan had some big skimmers in his winning 21lb 10oz*
1 – Lee Jan (Catchy Bait) – 21lb 10oz
2 – Pete Neate (Todber) – 20lb 2oz
Although I wasn’t even at the races today, it was close between the leading weights with just one of two decent fish separating them.
The nugget ceremony
£2 each from Nick P and me plus Lee Jan and Roy W kindly donated the pounds they won as The Nugget-O-Meter climbed to £523.
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 – River Parrett
Coming soon – Lots more match reports
#sponsoredpost #affiliatelinks
