Summerhayes – Open – 22nd March 2026

After really struggling on Sellicks I was hoping for better things on Longs today, a good turnout with 19 fishing and when it was my turn to draw I pulled out 17 on the bottom bank. It’s one of the widest pegs on the lake and can be good for silvers although I’d have preferred to have been in the thirties. For company I had Glynn to my left with Dan ‘Making it Happen’ Taggart on 15 and Nigel Bartlett round on 13 which is one of my favourite pegs on Longs.

Nice and simple approach today (as the island was out of pole range) with a couple of top four lines and two more at 11.5 metres. On the whistle I fed all my swims with a little groundbait and some pinkies and also began pinging some maggots over the longer lines. Dan got off to a great start with a tench first chuck while I missed a bite and bumped a fish before getting off the mark with a nice roach. I was getting regular bites from roach and skimmers (with two proper ones around 2lb apiece) and a gorgeous little crucian (I know I say it every time but I never tire of catching them).

Dan and Nigel were also catching well and apparently Toby on 33 was bagging with some decent skimmers. After 2.5 hours my short lines began to slow so I went out to 11.5 metres and had a 8oz skimbob first put in, it was really good for an hour or so until the carp moved in. I was literally hooking one every other fish and it was a case of catch a skimmer or roach, lose a carp, swap lines and then repeat the process. My hooklength box was emptying at an alarming rate but I was still getting some decent silvers in amongst the carnage including several more big skimmers and a 10oz tench which I hooked on the whistle and I finished up with 45 silvers and 4 carp.

Alex Kerr on 37 was first to weigh and had 35lb 12oz of mainly carp, after winning yesterday Nick DNW’d on 39, Bill ‘The Paste’ had 19lb 2oz, Oscar on peg 5 was the early leader with 40lb 1oz (and returned his fish back before I could get a catch shot!) and then Steve Raybould had done well on 8 with 41lb 8oz despite chucking his number four section in and having to fish the tip for most of the match.

Better than a catch shot Oscar!

Steve Raybould is enjoying getting back into match fishing (apart from randomly chucking pole sections in the lake!)

Kev ‘O on 11 weighed 24lb 6oz and then Nigel had an excellent 15lb 2oz of silvers despite getting carped out towards the end of the match, Dan did well with 30lb 9oz (which included 10lb 10oz of silvers) and then my four carp weighed 16lb and my silvers went 23lb 3oz. Glynn had 19lb 1oz of carp and 14lb 4oz of silvers before Mark Leahy on unfancied peg 21 (which was also the golden peg) went into the lead with 46lb 1oz.

I had a lovely day catching 23lb 3oz of silvers

Dave Phillips went into second place with 41lb 10oz on peg 25, Big Bad Bob had 10lb 10oz of silvers, Zooner weighed 6lb 11oz on 29, McKenzie chucked back and then Adie on 32 had an excellent 20lb 3oz of silvers and for good measure added 24lb 13oz of carp which put him in second place for both. Toby had caught well early on and weighed 14lb 4oz of mainly skimmers, Rob B had 14lb 9oz of carp and silvers and Rog C didn’t weigh on 36.

1 – Mark Leahy (Summerhayes) – 46lb 4oz
2 – Adie Bishop (Summerhayes) – 45lb
3 – Dave Phillips (Summerhayes) – 41lb 10oz

Silvers
1 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 23lb 3oz
2 – Nigel Bartlett (Summerhayes) – 15lb 2oz
3 – Glynn Wickham (Summerhayes) – 14lb 4oz
3 – Toby Burrell (Team Army) – 14lb 4oz

I had a nice pick up of £63 for winning the silvers and as always it was a really close frame with a fish or two between the top three, there were two 20lb+ bags of silvers and numerous double figure weights, great fishing.

Oscar donated £1 and along with pounds from Toby B, Dan T and Zooner the Nugget-O-Meter climbed to £245.

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