For Festive Fixture number four of five it was back to Acorn for their Xmas open and I was over the moon when I drew peg 31 which has been a really good area for silvers recently. Foxy was on 33 while to my right were Mark Roberts on 29, Bunghole Bob on 27 (which he didn’t fancy so the cameras stayed in the van!) and Welsh sensation Gareth Boycott was opposite on 25.
As per usual, after feeding all my lines I kicked off across trying to catch the ide but despite missing a couple of bites it wasn’t really happening. I did eventually catch a big skimmer but that was my only fish in the first sixty minutes and as far as I could tell it was the same for everyone around me. The 11.5 metre swims were next and I started getting the odd bite and caught a couple of ide, two little 2oz skimbobs and a 4oz hybrid but it wasn’t hectic.
Gareth was catching some ide and Mark next door had a couple of big perch, I had a big skimmer and lost a foulhooked carp and then went back across for a few more ide and another decent skimmer. It had been hard going again and I only finished up with 15 fish (3 decent skimmers, 9 ide and 3 small fish) which I thought might go around 8lb. Mark and Bob were both admitting to around 8-9lb of silvers while Gareth said he might have 10lb.
We would be last to be weighed and when the scales reached me, only 6lb something was winning the silvers, my fish went 8lb 15oz to put me in the lead but it only lasted until we got to Mark, he only had five fish (two big perch plus a tench and skimmers) for 9lb 10oz, Bob had 24lb 1oz which included 8lb 12oz of silvers and as Gareth had 10lb 5oz of mainly ide (and 15lb of carp), Bunghole won our section by default.
1 – Mark Walsh (Acorn) – 80lb 10oz
2 – Paul Elmes (Acorn) – 79lb
3 – Martin Rayet (Acorn) – 71lb 4oz
Sections
A – Bob Gullick (Acorn) – 24lb 1oz
B – Des Shipp (Preston Innovations) – 52lb 1oz
C – Kev Perry (Acorn) – 9lb
D – Tony Ponting (Acorn) – 49lb
Silvers
Gareth Boycott (Acorn) – 10lb 5oz
Best Xmas Jumper – Sue Faiers
Sue won the best Xmas jumper (photo credit – Acorn*)
£2 each from Nick P and me helped the Nugget-O-Meter reach £111.
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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