Prison Service Teams of 4 - Garbolino Lindholme Lakes - 24th/25th April

This is one of the main events of the year for me as it takes me to what has become my favourite commercial fishery in the country, Lindholme Lakes.

Now I am not in the Prison Service, I assist in making up numbers on a friends team.  This is the second year for me.  The plan, as last year was to travel up to Lindholme on the Tuesday morning for a pleasure/practice session then stay over at the fishery and fish the match on the Wednesday.

Tuesday 24th April


So after an early start we get to the fishery for about 8:30 in time for a good cooked breakfast before settling down on Bonsai lake for the day.  We were limited with pegs on the day due to an open match and so between the 4 of us we occupied pegs 11 to 15 (I think 13 was left empty).  I was on peg 14 and this was my view for the day

My plan for the day was to try a few different methods and just have a chilled out day.  Covering as many options as I could I fished a banjo feeder to the point of the left island whilst I had a waggler set up to fish in the open water between the islands.  I also had a pellet feeder set up to fish on the bottom beneath the waggler line.  I had pole lines set up in the open water in front of me and and in the margins.  My only target for the day was to beat my travelling partner Mark, who was on peg 15.
I was still setting up my gear as Mark was catching fish, I have to say with a smug grin on his face as well

As the day progressed however I did get my own back and by the time we decided to pack up for the day I had at least double the number of fish that Mark did :-)

After fishing on the Tuesday we retired to one of the new pods at Lindholme which are a great addition and well suited to housing a couple of mates for a few days fishing!

Wednesday 25th April

On the day of the match we knew that 2 of us would be on Bonsai lake and 2 of us would be on Oasis.  This was the format last year and as me and Mark were on Oasis last year, it was our time on Bonsai this year.  From the drawbag I had peg 6 and Mark had peg 46 (I think, but it was in that area).  You will notice that there are no photos from Wednesday to upload and this is simply because the weather was so bad I couldn't bear to take my phone out of my pocket to try take any.  We learned some new Yorkshire language on this day, 'ALL IN' means 'Start Pissing Down' and 'ALL OUT' means 'Stop Pissing Down'.  There was no variation inbetween.  So on a very hard day I had to keep rotating between 5 pole lines and a feeder line to keep the bites coming.  Frustratingly I lost about almost as many as I actually landed.  At the weigh in I put 38lb-odd on the scales which gave me 4th in my 13 man section.  This was well off the main prizes as the lake and match was one with over 100lb but considering my section was won with 48lb-odd it left me ruing those lost fish and they could have seen me take the section.

Following the match the overall results showed the team finishing 8th out of 13 which is an improvement on last year.