First of the year

Today I got on the bank for the first time since November. I loaded the car up last night ready for a quick get away this morning and forgot to take my two bottles of water from the fridge uppppps. I left home just after 6.30  for the 10 mile drive to Lindholme lakes at Sandtoft, in thick fog.

I was one of the first to arrive at the fishery and the kettle had not even boiled, so had a short wait for my first coffee of the day, coffee drunk and still no sign of Aaron or Neil, god that place would just not run without Bev. A last Aaron arrived to open the tackle shop so in to get a few bags of pellets for the day, then back into the cafe for a bacon buttie to see me through the day, by now a few more people were turning up some for the open match and the others for the maggot drowners match I was fishing on Oasis lake.

we paid our pools and drew our pegs, plenty of room for us all with only 10 of use spread from pegs 35 to 63. I was happy with 63 the end peg but it was a stong wind blowing to my end of the lake all the early fog had gone.

I only set up one pole rig at about 9mtr the wind was to strong for more. I soaked a bag of micro pellets and added a few 4mm pellet to them, and at 10.15 all in and away we went, first two puttings two small F1's, then nothing this was going to be harder than I though, I tried a couple of other lines with no luck plus straight out was the only place I could hold the pole right.

After a couple of hours and only a few fish I tried the method feeder, dam I had left all my hook lengths with pellet bands on at home so tried it with just corn on the hook and managed 1 fish and two lost feeders, so back on the pole and a few more fish.

In the last hour I had a change of tact and set up a second rig for the inside, I had 3-4 fish off this in the last hour and weighted in a massive 16lb 8oz. and expected to have come last not having a clue what the others had caught. As I saw the rest of the results I hadn't done as bad as I thought and finished 7th out of 10 with the winning weight being only 27lb I was happy for my first outing of the year.

I made a lot of mistakes and should have known better, but a few more days on the bank will hopefully put that right.