Acorn Fishery – Open – 6th June 2026

Back up to Acorn for one of their opens and drew bridge peg 21 which is normally a good area. As per the norm it was windy which would make fishing long tricky so I set up rigs for 10 metres and top four. It was a slow start and took quite a while to get my first bite, I had a couple of ide but it wasn’t really happening. Came in on the short line and caught a few fish including two tench but I certainly wasn’t pulling any trees up and after two hours I only had 6-7lb which is way off the pace normally required to do well.

I normally stick to using red maggots on the hook but on a whim tried a white one and had a brilliant hour or so catching ide, a couple of tench and two decent skimmers. Would I have caught those fish if I’d stayed on red maggots?, I really don’t know and it’s one of those questions you’ll never be able to answer 100% one way or another but it certainly felt like they preferred whites today.

Thought I was going to bag up but it slowed again and although the photo above doesn’t really do it justice, the wind was a nightmare and I had fish literally blown off the hook, I also lost a big foulhooked ide and possibly a tench. I did strike into a fish that either felt foulhooked or an eel and in the end it was both as I landed one of 8oz hooked up the bum!

When the scales got round to our side, Des on peg 3 was leading with 127lb 8oz which also included over 40lb of silvers and Paul Faiers had also done well (after collecting his post and milk) on peg 2 with 124lb 15oz. I had a couple of carp for 9lb 13oz and then my 56 silvers went 36lb which I didn’t think would do any good today.

Back at the results, I had a nice surprise when I won the silvers by default (thanks to Des winning the match) and picked up £45 but it was close as Glenn C on 34 had weighed 35lb 11oz of silvers.

1 – Des Shipp (Preston Innovations) – 127lb 8oz
2 – Paul Faiers (Sensas 88) – 124lb 15oz
3 – Graham Smith (Acorn) – 114lb 5oz

Sections
A – Jerry Salisbury (Acorn) – 92lb 12oz
B – Pedro Mc Harris (Acorn) – 112lb 8oz
C – Dave Willmott (Hybrid Pole Elastic) – 96lb 6oz
D – Kev Perry (Sensas 88) – 104lb 13oz

Silvers
Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 36lb

£2 each from Nick P and me saw the Nugget-O-Meter reach £389.

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