about 20 years ago I caught a small Tench (about 1lb 6oz) from a local pond that was stuffed with fish at the time, it was one a chuck & I decided to take it home & put it in my dads (newly dug) garden pond.
I had to carry a (very heavy) bag full of water & the fish about 2 miles home, across numerous barbed wire fences & through a field with a bull in it, a bull that hated me!
I was glad when I got it home & my dad was happy with his "wild" fish.
It lived happily alongside the orfe & the small koi for quite a few years, although it was very shy & nervous, when the other fish were out basking the little tench always liked to hide in the weed, a few years later all brightly coloured "show off" fish were eaten by a heron, but the tench survived.
The ornamental fish were often replaced but usually vanished pretty quickly once the greedy heron spotted them, in the end, when my dad got bored feeding the herons with goldfish, the little tench had the pond to himself.
Quite a few years later, my dad decided he was going to fill in the pond & have his garden refurbished, I insisted he drain the pond first & check for the tench as I intended to move him to a local pond.
Unfortunately,
he was gone
![Cry :Cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry1.gif)