There are loads of great silvers matches on the calendar now and a brand new competition for this year is the Ace of Acorn Silvers with qualifying fixtures starting last October. I managed to qualify on my first attempt and I’ve been looking forward to this one. Arriving nice and early, the car park was already filling up with an impressive array of the South West’s finest silvers talent. Zoe and Des welcomed everyone and showed off the fantastic trophy that awaited the inaugural winner of this event (along with a rather tasty £500). The draw was filmed live with all the competitors called up in the order they qualified and I was fourth to dip my hand in the bag and couldn’t quite believe it when I pulled out number 4 on the island, an absolute screamer of a peg!
My fellow islanders for the day were George Sumsion to my left, John Fuidge on 3, Nick Ewers (peg 2) and Paul Dicks on 1. A great little touch was a board behind each peg with your name on which made you feel like a VIP (Very Important Piscator!).
We got underway and I fed a top four line, 10 metres and pinged maggots across, starting by the boards it took a while to get a bite only for a carp to tear off! My next fish was an ide but then I hooked another carp and it wasn’t going particularly well for me, John on the other hand was bagging and shipping back an ide every chuck. I was getting odd ide but already it was obvious I wasn’t doing it right, I had a long lash and was struggling to feed with a catty due to the wind whereas John had a shorter line between float and pole tip and was using a toss pot to feed.
After an hour, I had around 8 ide while John was already on around 30 and I could see landing nets being regularly used by Nick and Paul as well. I set up another rig with a shorter lash, slid a toss pot on and began catching well, the trouble is you need to make hay while the sun shines with the ide and I was already an hour behind. Sure enough going into the third hour, bites slowed up and people began trying their other lines. I had three ide in as many chucks at 10 metres but it was short lived.
Top four resulted in one fish and rotating round the lines I was catching odd ide but was struggling and hooking quite a few carp as well, George was having similar issues although John had several decent skimmers. I spent the last hour at 10 metres for a few ide along with a couple of tench and I ended up with 29 fish. The scales started with Paul and he’d done well with 30lb 4oz, Nick had a similar day to me and weighed 18lb 3oz, John then had an excellent 32lb 2oz before my fish went 18lb 12oz, George weighed 10lb 14oz but had hooked loads of carp.
I weighed 18lb 12oz but the peg was certainly worth a lot more*
I finished packing up and took my kit back to the car before catching up with the scales just as they reached Des on peg 31, looking at the board, Ads Palmer was top so far with 44lb 5oz, a brilliant weight from peg 19. Des pulled his nets out and it was going to be very close but the digital display read 45lb 6oz and he went into lead with a few pegs to go. Photos courtesy of Acorn*
Des had 45lb 6oz to add another title to his rather extensive roll of honours*
Darrel B on 33 had 25lb 2oz, Alex Kerr weighed 37lb 1oz, Vince Brown had 22lb 7oz, Kev Perry on 36 weighed 16lb 11oz and Bob G had 18lb 6oz which meant Des was the first Ace of Acorn Silvers Champion.
Framers and section winners. From left to right, Martin Rayet, Darren Duffield, Des Shipp (Champion), Dave Willmott, Ads Palmer and John Fuidge (not in photo – Alex Kerr)*
1 – Des Shipp (Preston Innovations) – 45lb 6oz
2 – Adam Palmer (Sensas) – 44lb 5oz
3 – Darren Duffield (Ilminster) – 41lb 5oz
Sections
A – John Fuidge (Acorn) – 32lb 2oz
B – Martin Rayet (Acorn) – 39lb 9oz
C – Dave Willmott (Acorn) – 36lb 11oz
D – Alex Kerr (Acorn) – 37lb 1oz
A fantastic event, obviously I’m very disappointed to have not done better off a brilliant peg, I got it wrong in the first hour and had a spanking off John next door. To be honest the standard is so high in a match like this, even with drawing one of the best pegs, I was still miles off the pace, even if my first hour had been better, I’d still have needed double what I caught to even win my section! I still loved every minute of it and will be trying my hardest to qualify again this year.
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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