Acorn Fishery – Open – 18th October 2025

I’ve been dreaming about drawing peg 40 at Acorn for years and on Saturday for Foxy’s latest match, I finally managed to pull it out the bag but would it live up to my expectations?

I set up a rigs for across to the island at 13 metres, two lines at 10 metres plus a top four swim which was the deepest part of the peg. On the whistle I started long and was catching ide quite well although I did bump a couple and pulled out of what felt like a decent skimmer. After an hour I had around 20 ide and was really enjoying it although going into the second sixty minutes, my bites slowed right up while Dan Squire to my left and Mark Roberts over on the island peg 2 continued netting ide regularly.

With two and a half hours gone, I’ve had my first look at 10 metres and a positive bite resulted in a big skimmer, a few ide followed but it wasn’t solid and swapping to the other line angled to right only resulted in a couple of 2oz skimbobs. I was pinning my hopes on the short line (which I’d been feeding with maggots since the start) but rather worryingly, hadn’t seen any blows on it which is unusual. Dropping in on it with 45 mins remaining, I’ve not had a bite and rather limped towards the end of the match rotating round my other lines for very odd fish, I’ve not even hooked many carp (landing four).

On the final whistle, I knew I hadn’t done any good and Chris Fox soon arrived with the scales, my 42 fish weighed 16lb 4oz, Dan had to rush off and chucked back more than I’d caught and then Mark had 17lb 15oz on peg 2. Back at the results and Dan D on peg 21 weighed 18lb 7oz and Jo Wingate won the silvers with 23lb 1oz from peg 15. Overall, Kev Perry had the top weight with 148lb 15oz from peg 18 followed by Simon Stacey with 132lb on peg 9.

1 – Kev Perry (Sensas 88) – 148lb 15oz
2 – Simon Stacey (Acorn) – 132lb
3 – Daniel Driscoll (Acorn) – 110lb 3oz
4 – Mark Walsh (Acorn) – 90lb 5oz
5 – John Mills (Acorn) – 76lb 6oz

Silvers
Joanna Wingate (Acorn) – 23lb 1oz

It was the presentation evening for Ruthie’s Cup at the Ranch so I went straight from Acorn to Martock to get there for 7:30, I rounded the total up to £700 and let Chris have it to add to the charity pot. There’s a little update on the final Ruthie’s Cup match which can be found here. I wanted to just say a massive thank you to everyone who has contributed over the last year, people’s generosity is amazing and a little humbling at times. In the four years I’ve been doing it to remember my Mum and Dad it’s gone up every year (£400, £500, £560 and £700) so a very tidy total of £2160 that has gone to Yeovil Hospital Oncology Unit. It might be a big ask to top £700 next year but any amount raised is fantastic so thanks to everyone that got involved.

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