Summerhayes – Silvers Open – 25th April 2026

In a recent post I mentioned that I seem to be struggling to get my head round Sellicks which is mainly down to those pesky skimmers and my inability to catch enough of them to do any good! Would that change in the Saturday silvers match? Nine of us fishing today and I was near the bottom of the list to draw and with just three balls left, I was called up and well happy when I pulled out 16 which is my favourite peg.

I set up a couple of rigs for down the middle, 13 metres and towards the island (it’s a long way across, over 16 metres!). Pete got us underway and after feeding all my lines, I started at 10 metres and bumped a fish first put in which wasn’t ideal. I had a roach and a little tench but then lost two carp in quick succession and it was already looking like being quite hard today.

Moving out to 13 metres, I missed a bite before catching a big skimmer, a quality roach followed but it was just odd bites out of the blue and it was a similar story for my neighbours Alex on 13 and Big Bad Bob to my left. Over the next hour or so I did have two more decent skimmers but both were foul hooked! I felt like I was doing okay so with an hour to go, I got the 16 metre section out the bag and went further across. Four roach in as many chucks had me thinking I should have done it earlier but it was short lived. I did miss a couple of bites before adding another roach along with a little tench and then just before the all out, I hooked another skimmer (in the mouth this time!) which I landed safely to finish with a flourish.

Despite only having 17 fish, I thought there was a good chance of framing if it had fished as hard as I suspected, my early optimism proved to be rather misplaced when Bill ‘The Paste’ weighed 11lb 9oz before Dan ‘Definitely Made it Happen’ with a brilliant 27lb 10oz on peg 5. Nick P went into second place with 14lb, Alex had 12lb 1oz and then my fish went 10lb 11oz. Big Bad Bob had 3lb 3oz, Mark L on 20 DNW’d, Rog C weighed 2lb 13oz and last but not least was Roy H on the golden peg (24) and he took third spot with 13lb 9oz.

Bill on peg 3 had 11lb 9oz

Dan T had the top weight on the day with a fantastic 27lb 10oz

Roy was third with 13lb 9oz

1 – Dan Taggart (Summerhayes) – 27lb 10oz
2 – Nick Payne (Ilminster) – 14lb
3 – Roy Hughes (Summerhayes) – 13lb 9oz

£2 each from Nick P and me saw the Nugget-O-Meter climb to £295.

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