River Parrett – 1st July 2026 – Against Men and Fish

As I said in the previous post, I had a week off work but hadn’t actually planned on fishing again until the weekend although when some of the Stoke lads mentioned having a knock up in the Cricket Bat Field to see how it was fishing, I couldn’t resist! I drew up there for the first time in the Axminster Cup last year and had a lovely day catching some clonking roach to win the match with 3lb 11oz.

We met at Cartgate for breakfast (or should that be brunch!) at a rather sociable 12:30 before heading to Parrett Works. 9 of us fishing today and I drew number 6 which apparently looked lovely when they pegged it out. When I got there it did indeed look lush with quite a few little chublets swimming about and I really fancied it.

I set up a couple of rigs to fish down the middle and under the bush on the far side, I was ready with time to spare so had a walk to look at the other pegs and they all looked really nice. Dave P got us underway with a toot on his whistle and I started down the middle just loose feeding a few casters and a pinch of hemp. Inching the rig through in the minimal flow, the float buried first chuck and although the resulting tiny gudgeon was nothing to write home about, it was a start (and not a minnow!).

The next fish felt like a proper one but turned out to be a 8oz trout, I took a section off and had a very small roach and a couple of little chublets. Swapping between those two lines I was getting very occasional small fish and also had my second trout, a bigger one around a pound. I’d heard some splashing from Dave P next door and he said he’d had a big roach and some gudgeon. Cliffy came for a walk and said he’d caught a few roach but it sounded like it was fishing hard.

My first look under the bush where I’d been pinging casters resulted in another little chublet before I hooked a big fish which turned out to be trout number three! I’d been missing a few bites and then had a crayfish which might explain all the indications and then made the fatal error of using the landing net rather than swinging it. The fiesty little bugger then proceeded to hang on to the mesh using all it’s pincers, legs and tentacles meaning it took me an age to disentangle it!

I spent the last half an hour fishing across to the bush hoping for a bonus fish but only added a gudgeon and a couple of chublets to my meagre catch. My final tally was 20 fish which would be lucky to go a pound so I was sure I hadn’t done any good tonight. The scales started with Derek on peg 1, he weighed 6oz (mainly small fish!), Harv had 8oz (mainly small fish!), Cliffy weighed 7oz (mainly…..you get the picture!), Wayne C on peg 4 went into the lead with 10oz, Richard had 4oz and then my fish went 1lb 4oz.

Wayne was the early leader with 10oz

I was second with 1lb 4oz (mainly small fish!)

My time in pole position didn’t last long though as Dave P weighed 1lb 12oz boosted by a cracking roach, Jack W had 3oz and Nick P weighed 6oz so a really tough evening for everyone. The annoying thing is, there are loads of fish up there and 5-6lb bags are commonplace for pleasure anglers, it just doesn’t really produce the goods on matchdays.

1 – Dave Pope (Stoke) – 1lb 12oz
2 – Jamie Rich (Bait-Tech/Colmic) – 1lb 4oz
3 – Wayne Cooper (Stoke) – 10oz
3 – Steve Harvey (Stoke) – 8oz

I picked up £30 for second and although it had been really tough fishing it was still a pleasant evening in good company.

Squids from Nick P and me helped The Nugget-O-Meter up to £437.

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