All too soon it was time for one of the most important events of the year, you may be asking what is the reason for this momentous, memorable occasion, well it’s my birthday weekend of course! The celebrations for my 35th! year on the planet kicked off with a silvers match at Summerhayes. I met Nick at the Beefeater in Taunton and he treated me to breakfast (cheers mate!) and then after we’d eaten, the chap who always looks after us, brought out a rather nice chocolate brownie with a candle in it (he’d been tipped off!), so a great start to the day.
A breakfast birthday cake!
Then it was on to Bridgy and there were 9 of us fishing on Sellicks today, when it was turn to draw I pulled out my favourite peg 16 again, was this fate on my birthday?
Pete got us underway and I fed two lines at 10 metres and then pinged maggots across to the island before starting on the shorter lines. The fish obviously didn’t want to join in with the birthday celebrations as it took half an hour to get my first bite which of course I missed. I did catch a little tench and bumped a fish but that was it for the first sixty minutes. 13 metres was next and it was a complete flop, a couple of missed bites, a lost carp and that was it, this wasn’t going to plan!
Adding another section I finally began getting odd roach and skimmers but it was far from prolific and Nigel Bartlett on 13 was struggling as well. I did hook one fish that I thought was a carp so I threw the pole back to stop it reaching the far bank reeds only for a 2lb skimmer to come flying out the water and the hook pulled out. With an hour and quarter left, I got the 16 metre section out and had a run of roach followed by a lovely 2lb tench and I felt I was now doing okay although Nigel landed several big skimmers and Roy down on peg 20 was still getting odd fish. Just before the all out I had a 2lb skimbob to finish with 30 fish and I thought it was going to be close between Nigel, Roy and me.
The scales started with Nick P on 3 who had some nice skimmers for 15lb 15oz, Bill ‘The Paste’ weighed an excellent 19lb 4oz, Dan T had 15lb, Alex on peg 9 weighed 9lb 2oz before Nigel Bartlett went into the lead with a brilliant 22lb 10oz. My fish went 16lb 14oz, Rog C had 2lb 4oz, Roy then went into second place with 21lb 12oz and last but not least Big Bad Bob weighed 7lb 10oz.
Nigel had the top weight with 22lb 10oz of big skimmers (and I’m sure there’s even a hint of a smile there!)
Roy was second with another great net of fish for 21lb 12oz
Back at the results and I had another lovely surprise when Sally brought out more cakes and candles for me so even though I didn’t pick up, I had a really nice day and I must say a massive thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on Facebook.
More cakes to finish off a really nice day
1 – Nigel Bartlett (Summerhayes) – 22lb 10oz
2 – Roy Hughes (Summerhayes) – 21lb 12oz
3 – Bill Hopping (Summerhayes) – 19lb 4oz
Thanks to kind £2 donations from Roy Hughes, Nick P and me plus a pound from Dan T, the Nugget-O-Meter climbed to £314, I’d also met up with some of the Stoke lads last night and the Grand Wiz (£5), Yorkie (£7), Norts (£10) and Terry The Toast (£5) very generously boosted the charity total which now stands at a brilliant £341, thank you everyone!
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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