Bank End Fisheries, Doncaster: Family who started fishing lakes business in Yorkshire's angling mecca'

David McCallum and his father Andrew of McCallum’s Farm Shop and Bank End Fisheries in Blaxton between Finningley and Doncaster set the ball rolling when they took on the land that was also home to two lakes, which had been brought about by quarrying of sand and gravel. They knew what they were doing, knew how popular fishing was in the area and had the farming nous and equipment to make things happen quickly.

“Someone told me years ago that every so often you’ve got to keep reinventing yourself, you can’t keep on doing the same thing,” says David.

“The lakes that we developed were really just two big holes in the ground that had been dug in the early 80s for sand and gravel for the two lakes we took on. We took them on with the view of making them fishing lakes, both my dad and me. We both put money into it.

These days David can be seen either serving in the butchery within the farm shop, out with the thousands of anglers that have made Bank End Fisheries, now with three lakes, one of the top destinations for fishing in South Yorkshire or having meetings about the McCallum’s gin liquer range or new suppliers to McCallum’s Farm Shop.

“My grandfather and my father were both farm manager at a farm just two miles away, as the crow flies, until it was sold in 1996, and I was an agricultural contractor. This place came up for rent and we knew what we wanted to do.

“South Yorkshire is a Mecca for fishing and we’re now up there with some of the best ones. Our thinking was always to give a fair rate for anglers to get them in and then the more people you’ve got, the more chance of them spending money while they’re here. We opened for fishing on 16 June 1989.

David says his first customers very nearly made him question whether he and his dad had come up with the right idea.

“They turned up in a blue Ford Escort car, three of them. My very first customers. I went to first one who pointed to the other and said ‘he’s paying’, same thing with the next one pointing to the third one and he told me where to go! It turned out he’d just got out of jail for GBH! I swiftly shut the gates and called the police. Not exactly the start I’d hoped for but now 35 years on we have 25,000 customers through here a year just for the fishing.

But it wasn’t just fishing that was going on, David and Andrew were also farming not just the 30 acres they were renting but also the adjoining land that made their land up to 100 acres, which was to last a further sixteen years while David continued his other work as a contractor.

“In 1989 we’d taken the adjoining land on also. We were growing wheat and other crops and we’d put a building in the middle, which went up as a grain store.

“We’d started growing PYO fruit in 1991, and we had opened a little farm shop on the roadside in 1995. Our fruit by then was all on tabletops so people didn’t have to bend, and that was the year we bought the 30 acres we had been renting for six years.

“We converted what had been the grain store into a farm shop in 2005 and built our own house. Quarrying then started on the additional land that we didn’t own, so we gave up that land and carried on doing the fruit on the 30 acres. I packed in my agricultural contracting work when the bigger farm shop was up and running in 2006-7.

Today the farm shop includes a deli, butchery, café and a shop selling fishing tackle. Fruit is no longer grown in any significant quantity but the McCallum liquer range encompasses 11 gin varieties, including the unique golden raspberry variety and a whisky liquer that won a Bronze in the world liquer awards in 2019.

Everything they stock from food and drink to the tackle is in great demand, but the biggest demand of all is for more fishing availability and the chance of stopping over, both of which David is on target to have addressed by this time next year.

“We have three lakes at the moment and we are planning on digging a fourth in March/April this year. The lakes we already have established are 6.5, 3.5 and 1.5 acres. It’s all coarse fishing so everything goes back and we’ve got everything from roach, perch, bream and big carp up around 30 lbs.

“We have 114 fishing pegs at the minute and we have been known to be full. When Covid hit and the first thing you could do was go fishing we had 136 people through the gate one day. More anglers than we’d got pegs for, but you can get people come in a morning and go, and some that come in an evening in the better months.

“We have always been asked if somebody can bring a caravan or camper and so we thought it was time to go down this line. Planning was approved 22 December 2023 and we are now heading towards a 50-pitch touring site and digging another lake.

“A local farmer in the village said recently, ‘I see what you’re doing, you’ve now started farming people,’

“We still grow some fruit, although we no longer grow strawberries as we always had before. That local farmer is right, but we have always diversified, before it became a big thing.

I still have what is an agricultural approach to everything. You could say I’m like ‘a big hammer and a moveable spanner’.

David says it’s very much a team game at McCallum’s and Bank End Fisheries.

“We now have 20 full and part-time people involved in the business. There’s me, my wife Fiona, our eldest daughter Lizzie who is studying at St John’s University in York who, when she’s home, helps me in the butchery; our youngest Joanna who helps weekends. We all have this ethos of it’s no good standing around doing nothing. My mum Marjorie and dad still work 7 days a week.