Summerhayes – Silvers Open – 18th April 2026

Ten of us fishing silvers Saturday on Sellicks and I pulled out peg 8 which wouldn’t have been my first choice although as I was setting up there were lots of roach topping and I quite fancied it. First put in at 10 metres I bumped a fish and thought I was in for a good day but apart from two little tench and a couple of missed bites, it wasn’t really happening.

Adding a section and going past the feed, the float buried and a pound hybrid was the nice result followed by a decent perch, a 2lb skimmer and then an eel around the same size. It was short lived though and I went back to struggling for bites while Bill ‘The Paste’ to my right and Toby across on golden peg 18 were catching some big skimmers.

Going to 13m and then 14.5m didn’t really see an improvement with just odd roach and I also began hooking quite a few carp. One snapped me, breaking the float in the process so I tried fishing across with the light rig and had another eel, this one around 1.5lb. A little tench was next but before I could get too excited I hooked yet another carp and this one snagged me solid on something and I just knew it wasn’t going to end well! Pulling for a break the elastic snapped and I lost the lot.

After setting another rig up, I was still getting odd silvers (and carp) but knew I was long way behind Toby and Bill who were both still catching and it was too close to call between them but could Bill stop the golden peg going? The last hour was good for me with quite a few roach and just before the all out I had a nice 2lb skimmer.

Pete and the scales soon arrived at Derek on peg 3 who had 9lb 13oz before Bill weighed a brilliant 21lb 3oz, my 26 fish went 14lb 10oz, Nick on 10 had 8lb 5oz, Zooner weighed just an ounce less and Colin on 16 had 8lb 11oz. Toby was next and when he pulled his net out it was going to be very close but he’d done enough with 23lb 13oz which put him in line for a bumper payday with three pegs left to weigh. Vic on 20 chucked back, Dan T weighed 9lb 3oz and Rog C on 24 had 3lb 11oz which Toby had a nice pick up, Bill was second and I sneaked third place.

Bill had a cracking net of skimmers and roach for 21lb 3oz

I weighed 14lb 10oz which included two big eels

Toby’s fantastic 23lb 12oz saw him take home a bumper pick up

1 – Toby Burrell (Team Army) – 23lb 13oz
2 – Bill Hopping (Summerhayes) – 21lb 3oz
3 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 14lb 10oz

I picked up £26 for third which helped pay for the day (and slightly softened the blow of wrecking/losing two of my favourite floats!)

£2 each from Nick P and me plus nuggets from Dan T and Zooner took the charity total up to £286.

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