Summerhayes – Silvers Open – 31st January 2026

The final outing of the month was a Saturday silvers match on Sellicks, eight of us fishing today and the only peg I really didn’t want was 12 at the top end and I may have mentioned it once or twice! I was third on the list behind Rog who pulled out number 24 and Nick who was happy with 6, I stuck my hand in the bucket and of course got the one I didn’t want! Dan was next and drew 3 which has been producing some lovely nets of roach and he’d be hard to beat from there.

We all had plenty of room, Roy Hughes on 9 was the next peg to my right and Russ was the other side on 15 which he didn’t fancy but I thought he’d do okay as it’s a wide swim. I set up the usual rigs to fish a couple of lines at 11.5 metres plus over to the island. On the whistle I fed all my lines before starting on the right hand line angled towards open water, my first indication resulted in a foul hooked carp which wasn’t on long. Switching to the left, I was into what I initially thought was a skimmer but I’m pretty sure it was a decent roach, also not hooked in the mouth but I’ll never know as it came off at the net. I then bumped a fish and was off to a less than auspicious start before finally getting off the mark with a little tench.

A nice little spell followed swapping between the two 11.5 metre lines and I had some nice roach along with another small tench and a lovely crucian although I felt I was still playing catch up with Russ who’d caught roach steadily so far. As we approached the three hour mark, my bites had slowed up and I was itching to have a look across to the island. I had to wait a little while for my first indication which was from a cracking roach and I was hoping I’d be able to string some fish together. Then disaster struck when I pulled out of four decent fish on the trot and unsurprisingly that pretty much killed it!

My next fish was a carp so I decided to have another look on the shorter lines but never had another bite there. Back across I bumped a couple more fish which was really frustrating and on closer inspection, the nose cone had come out of my top kit and wedged up the number two section, trapping the elastic and making it way too pingy! Changing top kits helped and I had two nice roach and a perch but then couldn’t get a bite again and at the final whistle I knew my 21 fish wouldn’t do any good today.

After packing up I went to give Pete a hand with the weigh in and he decided to start on the far side today, Rog C on 24 had 2lb 7oz, Alex did well on 21 with 8lb 14oz, Colin didn’t weigh and then Russ had some lovely roach for 10lb 5oz, my fish went 6lb 11oz, Roy had 3lb 10oz, Nick weighed 5lb 13oz and then Dan ‘Making It Happen’ had some quality silvers and a lovely tench for 10lb 14oz to win the day.

Russ had 10lb 5oz of mainly quality roach

Dan had the top weight with 10lb 14oz which included a nice tench

1 – Dan Taggart (Summerhayes) – 10lb 14oz
2 – Russ Hilton (Colmic) – 10lb 5oz

So a close frame as always and it’s nice fishing with quality silvers although I haven’t fished a great match and the swim was worth more than I managed, but I still don’t like that peg!

Nick P kindly donated £4 and £2 from me helped the Nugget-O-Meter climb up to £180.

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

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