Summerhayes – Open – 1st March 2026

Back to Summerhayes the following day for the match on Longs and I was hoping for a peg along the track and got my wish when I pulled out 30 which is right where you need to be for silvers at the moment. I had Nick P on my left and then the next peg to my right was Dan T all the way round on 19, so plenty of room which couldn’t hurt either!

On the whistle I fed lots of lines, two at top four, 10 metres down the middle, another two swims at 13 metres and I also pinged some maggots across. Kicking off on the short lines, I got off to a great start with a tench around 8oz after only five mins and another of similar size not long after. I was getting regular bites and after an hour, I had a dozen fish (skimmers, roach and tench) for probably 3lb. Nick was fishing down the middle and also catching steadily including a big skimmer and there was nothing between us.

The second sixty minutes was similar for me but it was beginning to slow up while Nick was still catching well so I moved out to 10 metres. A carp first put in wasn’t ideal but then I had a nice tench of a pound and had a really good hour catching tench of various sizes and some skimmers. With half the match gone, I was itching to have a go on the longer lines where I’d been pinging maggots from the start but decided to have another quick look short first and had a brilliant spell catching four big skimmers.

Two hours to go I’ve gone to 13 metres and swapping between the two lines, I’ve had several more decent skimmers, lots between 4-8oz and more little tench although I did pull out of a two good skimmers. Just as I was beginning to think a big weight was on the cards, I started hooking carp and the last half an hour or so was a write off, in total I hooked seven carp and landed six of them. I finished up with 71 silvers (and greens) and thought I must have over 20lb.

The scales started with Harry on 37 who had 15lb 2oz, Glynn was on ‘Cyanide Straight’ and weighed 30lb 9oz before Steve Collins edged into the lead with a huge 139lb 11oz from peg 11, the chap on 13 had 23lb 12oz and Rob B weighed 7lb 12oz of silvers. Dan T on 19 had 12lb 6oz (including 6lb 4oz of silvers) and then it was round to me, my carp went 22lb 5oz and then my silvers weighed 26lb 2oz, a cracking days fishing. Nick also had a lovely bag of silvers for 15lb 3oz along with 19lb 3oz of carp and Windsor on 34 weighed 20lb.

Steve Collins wins again, this time with a massive 139lb 11oz

I won the silvers with 26lb 2oz of skimmers, tench and roach

Nick did well with 34lb 6oz (which included 15lb 3oz of silvers)

1 – Steve Collins (Summerhayes) – 139lb 11oz
2 – Nick Payne (Ilminster) – 34lb 6oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 26lb 2oz
2 – Rob Birch (Summerhayes) – 7lb 12oz

So I won the silvers (and was actually second overall) picking up £34 and it was just a lovely days fishing, the icing on the cake was getting my pound back from Dan T which I added to the charity pot and the total now stands at £221.

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