River Parrett – Autumn Triple Round 2 – 2nd November 2025

I hadn’t necessarily intended to fish all three of these matches but after doing well and really enjoying the first one (catching a few fish also really helps!), I decided to fish the other two. We had a fair bit of rain leading up to the weekend so with some colour in the river again, hopefully we’d be in for another good match. Twelve of us fishing and we would all be in the first field at Parrett Works. I fancied pegs 8, 9, 14, 16 and 18 but pulled out 10 which definitely wasn’t on my wish list.

When I got there, the river looked spot on and I saw several fish top while I was setting up. Steve Blunden was above me on 9 and Derek G was the next peg downstream. On the whistle, I started down the middle and was getting the usual minnows along with odd gudgeon but the lack of any roach, dace or chublets was a tad worrying. After an hour or so, Dave Hilton (who was on peg 7) wandered down and said it was a similar story for him and it sounded like the river was fishing hard. He went to see how they were doing above me and shouted down that there was plenty of elastic out as Steve netted a cracking perch getting on for 2lb!

Then I had a positive bite and was into a big fish, it wasn’t going crazy, just plodding around and I felt sure I’d hooked a decent chub but when it eventually revealed itself, it wasn’t the much needed bonus I’d hoped for but a 2.5lb trout! As I released it, I saw Dave Pope on peg 8 net a fish which the other Dave confirmed was a chub so in the space of five minutes he’d witnessed three decent fish landed and mine was the only one that didn’t count!

A nice fish but it didn’t help my cause any!

I was still getting the very occasional gudgeon but it was a real struggle and it looked to be the same for Derek below me. Trying a light rig 13 metres down the peg, the float went straight under and I had my first roach albeit a very small one, next chuck I had a nice dace but before I could get too excited it was back to catching minnows. I had a little run of gudgeon down the middle before catching my second dace and then had my best fish of the day so far, a 4oz roach.

With 90 mins remaining, I couldn’t get a bite apart from minnows so fed some chopped worm down the middle using a bait dropper to see if I could catch an eel. I gave it three quarters of an hour and only had a couple of knocks so gave that up as a bad job and went back to catching minnows and the very odd gudgeon. Right near the end, the float dragged under and I snagged up on the bottom so I got down to the top kit and was stripping elastic using the pulla bung and the ‘snag’ started to give and I was expecting a branch to come to the surface but then it began to move and an 8oz eel appeared instead! Thankfully I landed it safely and that was the last fish of the day, I ended up with 27 fish (1 eel, 2 roach, 2 dace and 22 gudgeon) plus lots of minnows.

After packing my kit away, I went down to watch the weigh in, Norts on 18 had some quality roach for 3lb 6oz, Nigel had struggled on 16 for 2oz (mainly small fish!), Cliffy did well on 14 with 2lb 12oz, Parker ‘The Pole’ had 12oz, Derek weighed 1lb 3oz and then my fish went 1lb 14oz to put me third in the section.

Norts had some quality roach for 3lb 6oz

Cliffy had loads of small fish for 2lb 12oz

Parker ‘The Pole’ had 12oz

Derek weighed 1lb 3oz on peg 11

I had 1lb 14oz of roach, dace, gudgeon, minnows and that skillfully caught eel!

Dave Pope won the top section and the match with 3lb 7oz which was two chub and some small fish, Steve B was second with that big perch and a few bits for 2lb 3oz, Dave Hilton was third with 15oz, Nick P weighed 12oz, Danny had 8oz and Rob chucked back. Photo courtesy of Danny Blunn*

Steve was second in his section with 2lb 3oz which included a cracking perch*

Section A
1 – Dave Pope (Stoke) – 3lb 7oz
2 – Steve Blunden (Stoke) – 2lb 3oz
3 – Dave Hilton (Stoke) – 15oz

Section B
1 – Chris Norton (Stoke) – 3lb 6oz
2 – Cliff Gaylard (Stoke) – 2lb 12oz
3 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 1lb 14oz

I picked up £15 for third in my section after a tough day, with conditions similar to the previous match I was expecting it to fish well but it just goes to show that Parrett is a fickle mistress and always keeps you guessing. 3lb 7oz was top today whereas that weight didn’t even frame in the last round!

Autumn Triple Points after two rounds

Jamie Rich – 18 pts
Derek Goad – 16 pts
Dave Pope – 14 pts
Danny Blunn – 14 pts

The Nugget-O-Meter had a brilliant day thanks to very generous donations from Rob Cox (£5), Norts (£3), Nick P (£2) and me (£2) with the total climbing to £25.

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