Revels Fishery – Xmas Open – 23rd December 2025

Festive Fixture Five and my last match before Xmas was the Tuesday Open at Revels, a venue I absolutely love and just wish I could visit more often. After meeting Parker ‘The Pole’ for breakfast we arrived nice and early although the car park was already filling up fast as this match is always very popular. Complimentary bacon rolls and coffee were enjoyed by the 25 anglers as we all waited for the draw. Steve and me were near the top of the list and Dean pulled out 74 on Woodlanders for ‘The Pole’ and then 48 on Dead Tree for me. An absolutely brilliant silvers peg although I wasn’t counting any chickens as the last time I drew it, I got carped out, hooking something like 19 during the match! Rich Chave was last to arrive and got drawn out peg 12 behind the island on Main, not where you want to be for silvers and he was less than impressed!

For company I had Roy ‘The Bomb’ next door on 50 and Paul W was over on 41. There were loads of silvers topping which was hopefully a good sign and I was really looking forward to this. I set up little 0.1 and 0.2 gram Colmic Elsa’s for three lines at 10 metres, four sections and a top kit to hand swim. We got underway and I fed all my swims with a little groundbait and a few pinkies before starting short. Despite it being very clear, I still thought I’d catch some perch but never had a bite on the top kit line.

Moving out to four sections it was the same story which was a tad worrying and maybe it was going to be harder than I first thought! 10 metres was next and this time the float finally went under as a perch took the single pinkie and I began getting regular indications. After a few fish, I decided to have another look on the top four line and it was a bite a chuck from more perch along with a couple of cracking roach.

I got to 25 fish with an hour gone and Rich phoned to say he was catching small fish quite well and reported that Jamie B on 8 and Andy Miller (peg 7) were also both catching silvers. Bites began to slow on my shorter line so back out to 10 metres where I continued catching roach, perch, gudgeon, a rudd, the odd 4-6oz skimmer and a proper one of a pound plus which was a nice bonus. I was rotating round the three lines after every couple of fish, dripping in a little bait and leaving it.

It was lovely fishing and even better, I hadn’t hooked a carp yet! Paul had caught a couple of small ones while Roy was getting the odd decent skimmer on the bomb. I did strike into one fish which felt a bit bigger but it turned out to be a gorgeous 6oz ‘instant win’ goldfish which count as carp. As we neared the latter stages of the match (we were only fishing 4.5 hours today), I was having to nick just one fish per line before having to move. My first carp of the match also muscled in but at 2oz it didn’t give me too many problems and I also had a dinky little crucian which joined my small band of all sorts in the carp net!

Silvers had been topping all day and with 15 mins to go I decided to stick another section on and go past the feed and it was a fish a chuck so maybe I’d missed a trick and should have gone longer earlier but I’d still had a brilliant days fishing to end up with 87 fish which I hoped would go 7-8lb. The scales soon arrived and Paul weighed 8lb 1oz of mainly carp, Rod on 46 had 4lb 14oz, Derek P (peg 54 Middle) weighed 6lb 14oz of carp, my silvers went 8lb 14oz plus the little carpy selection added 12oz, Roy had 3lb 5oz of silvers and Paul L on 52 weighed 4lb 4oz of carp before the scales headed down to do Canal, Woodlanders, Main and the rest of Middle. Photos courtesy of Revels*

I had a lovely day catching roach, perch, skimmers, gudgeon and a perch for 8lb 14oz*

Roy ‘The Bomb’ caught some nice skimmers for 3lb 5oz*

Back at the results and Dean ‘The Man in Red’ Stacey had the top weight on the day with a massive 62lb 5oz of carp from peg 4 on Main, Hugh Roberts (63 on Canal) only needed 14lb 2oz for second spot and Adrian Hayes was third with 11lb 4oz from peg 9 on Main. Andy Miller was the best silvers on Main with 7lb 10oz of quality roach while Rich did really well to finish third with 6lb 12oz which included a nice bonus perch.

Dean just about edged the match with 62lb 5oz!*

Hugh was second with 14lb 2oz from peg 63 on Canal*

Andy Miller was second in the silvers with 7lb 10oz of quality roach*

Rich was third with 6lb 12oz from peg 12*

Mark Sheppard had the top silvers weight on Canal with 5lb 6oz*

Jamie Bumby had 4lb 10oz of silvers on peg 8*

1 – Dean Stacey (Team Amigos) – 62lb 5oz
2 – Hugh Roberts (Revels) – 14lb 2oz
3 – Adrian Hayes (Revels) – 11lb 4oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 8lb 14oz
2 – Andy Miller (Revels) – 7lb 10oz
3 – Rich Chave (Colmic) – 6lb 12oz

In the morning after the draw, all the anglers get to choose a prize (usually chocolates or biscuits) and one of them contains an envelope with £15 in and although Parker ‘The Pole’ had struggled for 14oz (mainly small fish!), when he unwrapped his prezzie he had that nice little bonus!

I picked up £60 (and a box of chocolates) for winning the silvers and it had been a thoroughly enjoyable day from start to finish, a bite a chuck all match and no carp (well apart from one of 2oz!) and I was looking forward to my next visit already.

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