Week five of the summer holidays and back to Twynersh with the assistance of Lee Blundell with kids from PAYP Slough.
Tuesday 23rd August was the first day - our usual swim on the match lake was occupied so we set up in the corner of lake seven. By the time I had gone to Slough to pick up the mini bus and collected the students, Lee had, as usual, set up the tackle and got the fish feeding in all the swims. We had probably the best day’s fishing of the holidays with one lad catching more than thirty five fish. Roach, bream, perch and even dace were caught.
The second day we returned to Twynersh with a slightly different compliment of young people and a new key worker Steve, but the weather was very different. It rained all day, heavily at times with blustery wind and the resultant drop in temperature overnight was not condusive to the fish feeding very well.
All the students managed to catch fish but it was very difficult and their attention began to wander. This led to some mischief that resulted in one lad being banned from the fishery by the manager Paul. The boy in question continued to lie about what he had been seen doing by both myself and the fishery manager, making matters much worse for himself. I had a long chat with him afterwards and explained that had he owned up and apologised he would have got off much more lightly.
Maintaing good behavior with such children is hard work and I would guess that some of the people these kids have come in contact with have not been prepared to make the effort. The young people have been able to avoid trouble by creating a confrontation that the person in authority was not willing to give the time or effort to deal with. This is not a criticism of the key worker Steve who did not witness this incident and was totally suportive throughout.
The day was cut a little short because everyone was wet through and the result was that I spent most of yesterday drying out my coaching tackle.
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