Virgin Pond

[Peter Waller]

I suppose a virgin water has to be the ultimate! My number one daughter lives on a rambling Suffolk country estate. A near neighbour has a farm pond that, apparently was unfished, atleast for many, many years.

 

An old boy who used to work on the estate reckons that, as a boy, and he's now atleast 90 in the shade, he'd helped stock the pond with carp, crucians and trout. Potentially exciting or what?!!

 

Well, what were we going to catch? We turned up with something of everything. Ummmmm, stacks of weed, probably no rumaging carp. Well, we'll go for crucians, so out came the match rods, and the rakes!

 

We raked out two swims, trimmed a few brambles and settled down. Within seconds we were both in!!!!! But no crucians, just rudd after rudd after rudd after yet more rudd. Just over six hours of fishing to hand, incredible stuff, but nothing over about eight ounces.

 

I'd guess that we were both pulling about 30 to 40 fish per hour, in between disentangling from the masses of brambles.

 

Reckon a pole fishing speed freak could have shown us how, but we were more than satisfied with what we had. Nothing big, but fin and scale perfect, and rudd are such beautiful fish. Brillient, but we never caught a crucian!

[coxy]

What a find! I love fishing unnown waters. I found ne and had a few large carp out of it. Im now always on the lookout for unfished waters.

[ayjay]

BIG pond is it Peter?

[poledark]

That's a lovely pic Peter,

Den

[Peter Waller]

ayjay:

BIG pond is it Peter?

Picture shows about 2/3rds of it. About 35 yards across its greatest dimension.

[ayjay]

Peter Waller:

Peter Waller:

BIG pond is it Peter?

Picture shows about 2/3rds of it. About 35 yards across its greatest dimension.

Sorry Peter, It was a feeble jest on the original size of the picture.

[Steve Burke]

Peter, a quick look at a large scale OS map will show that we're blessed with literally 1000s of these ponds in mid-Kent. Most of them are like yours and haven't been fished in living memory, and a great many of them contain rudd. I love 'em!

 

Few contain specimen fish, with one major exception. Many of them hold some very big perch. There may not be more than a handful, but they've got fat on a diet of stunted perch and silver fish. In fact, I can't recall any such water I've tried locally that didn't contain at least 2lb+ perch, and many of them produced much bigger ones.

 

So you could well have stumbled on a goldmine!

 

Interestingly John Bailey and Roger Miller told of fishing several such waters in East Anglia in their excellent book "Perch, Contemporary Days and Ways".

 

There's much useful information in this book, especially on such waters. Members may also find my piece "Big Perch from Commercial Carp Waters" useful for fishing this kind of venue, as the same principles apply. Go to http://anglersnet.co.uk/authors/steve01.htm

[chevin]

I found a water like that arounf 1960 and I managed to get permission to fish it. It was in the grounds of an estate and it was obvious that it hadn't been fished for years. It was obviously a carp water and so I approached with great stealth and flicked out a piece of crust on a link ledger. Within seconds I had a savage take, and landed a rudd of well over a pound. The next cast resulted in another rudd as did the next and the next and so on for hours! Although I was disappointed I really was very happy with the rudd fishing after I had resigned myself to what I had there. As it wasn't far from his home, I told Jack Hilton that I had found a carp water and invited him to join me for a session. He could charm carp from any water but all he caught there was rudd! He extracted revenge by modifying my hat with the aid of a pair of scissors in an unguarded moment on my part. Being as I had a free run of the water I introduced a number of lovely mirror carp of six to eight pounds each, and they were thriving well. Sadly during the '62-'63 winter when most waters remained frozen over for something like eight weeks, they succumbed to winter kill. I will never forget the day I went to the lake as it was thawing and seeing all of my carp and thousands of prime rudd floating on the surface. I never went back. The lake will still be there and it is possible it has never been fished since I walked away from it. I wonder if there is anything in there now?

[Peter Waller]

ayjay:

ayjay:

ayjay:

BIG pond is it Peter?

Picture shows about 2/3rds of it. About 35 yards across its greatest dimension.

Sorry Peter, It was a feeble jest on the original size of the picture.

I'd guessed that! Was just playing you along with an even more feeble jest!

[Peter Waller]

Thanks for that Steve, I hope that you are right! A lip hooked rudd lively during the autumn do you reckon?

 

I'm not a great fan of Bailey's writing but do you have a copy for sale?

 

I remember that freeze Chevin. My local pond froze solid & we never expected anything to survive but some did. Its was suggested that they did so by burying themselves in the mud.