Acorn Fishery – Open – 20th June 2026

Acorn on Saturday and Foxy asked me to draw for him (was he mad!) and I pulled out 19 which he didn’t look overly impressed with but there are worse pegs so I only earned a yellow card instead of a straight red. I drew 31 which is a great silvers peg, on the whistle I fed all my lines before starting across to the boards and was into fish straight away. A really good first hour saw me put 16 ide, a skimmer and 3 roach on the clicker. The second sixty minutes was steady but bites were getting a bit iffy and another 13 fish meant my catch rate was going in the wrong direction.

A look down the middle resulted in a little run of ide and a skimmer but it soon faded and similarly the top kit plus two line was a bit of a flop with an ide first chuck and then I couldn’t get a bite. Howard G on 29 was catching ide quite well but also landing the odd tench along with some big skimmers and I felt he was ahead of me. Rotating around my lines I was getting occasional fish but struggling to string bites together, I did hook a decent skimmer across that leapt majestically several times before falling off!

I did see a swirl on the short line where I’d been feeding maggots so I picked up a little shallow rig and when I had a big ide first put in, I thought I’d cracked but then it was a bite a chuck from small roach and it felt like I was being really busy without putting much in the net! Back across for the final hour or so I did catch quite well to end up with 78 fish (mainly ide and a couple of skimmers plus quite a few small roach I hadn’t counted). I was pretty sure Howard had beaten me and then John Mills came round and was admitting to 50-60lb so that was that as they only pay one in the silvers.

When the scales reached me, it was a good job I’d started a second net as my fish weighed 40lb 1oz and there’s a strict 40lb limit! I was surprised to just pip Howard’s 37lb 8oz but it was all academic anyway as back at the results John had weighed a brilliant 76lb 1oz. Overall Paul Nichols took the win with a massive 197lb from peg 5 closely followed by Clayton Hudson with 188lb (peg 10) and Kev Perry who had 183lb on 15. Photo credit – John Mills*

John won the silvers with a fantastic 76lb 1oz*

1 – Paul Nichols (Acorn) – 197lb 15oz
2 – Clayton Hudson (Acorn) – 188lb 2oz
3 – Kev Perry (Sensas 88) – 183lb 10oz
4 – Simon Stacey (Acorn) – 182lb
5 – Mark Broomsgrove (Sensas 88) – 163lb 3oz

Silvers
John Mills (Average Angler) – 76lb 1oz

So a really nice days fishing but despite drawing some really good pegs I’m not getting it right at Acorn at the moment, I’m catching 35-50lb when you need 60-75lb to win and I’m struggling to keep those ide coming consistently.

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