A trio of pictures trawled from previous posts. A typical eight ounce Crucian. One of the 'survivor' Tench and the Purple Irise's in bloom at the shallows of the main pool looking towards the housing estate high above.
Curiously for a shallow water, this pool more or less shuts down in Winter and is very slow to wake up in Spring? Some years it was well into May before even the Rudd would show and this despite the water always retaining a modicum of colour. I did once or twice catch a handful of small Roach on a Winters dusk but more often than not I blanked so I gave up on it in Winter. Conversely, in the last two years I fished there I found I could catch the Tench and Crucians in the Blazing sun of a Summers midday, in fact my catches were better at that time than in the late evening, a time when the surface of the pool came alive with rising Rudd and double flipping Crucians.
On those hot midday sessions the fish bubbled profusely and although the water was already well coloured one could see the silt being stirred up by the grubbing fish. Nevertheless despite the obvious enthusiasm of the fish for my offerings, the bites were sometimes ever so subtle even those off the Tench but particularly the Crucians. I used a small Harcork cane stemmed float taking around three BB shot and I arranged the tackle to lay two inches of line on the bottom with a tell tale shot an inch off the bottom. Baits were either sweet corn, flake, paste or red worm. The little Rudd and Roach could be a real nuisance some days but their bites were quite bold though occasionally one of those confident slanting tow aways did actually surprise me with a nice Tench, never a Crucian! After a long 'apprenticeship' I could eventually detect the subtlest of indications and my hit rate improved. Essentially what one was looking for was any slight but positive movement of the float that lasted for more than a second or two. It could be the merest of settling or rising of the float or, best of all an inch or two sideways movement. An instant strike would more often than not connect with a little 'tussler'.
Catches averaged around half a dozen of each Tench and Crucians but on one memorable sunny Sunday lunchtime I was rewarded with fourteen Tench and thirteen Crucians from alongside one of our lily patches . That day the 'tiddlers' were strangely absent, maybe pushed out by the numbers of better fish? I remember reading somewhere that we rarely catch more than ten percent of the fish in front of us. I mused that it would be encouraging if that were the case on the day in question.
I never discovered where the Mirror Carp came from? But as I said for a long time it was a prominent presence on the pool. I did hook it once again briefly when it looked around four pounds or so but it came adrift quite quickly! Some of the later anglers had seen it too and a couple of them were on a mission to bank it, even fishing at night but I don't think they managed it.
Curiously again, I never caught another Eel and I used worms quite often in fact they were my favourite bait choice and using them in the last year there I was surprised to catch some good sized Gudgeon? It transpired that Mark had put a few in right at the beginning!
I'll probably never go back even when we visit Wales but when it pops into my mind I like to think that now and again a keen youngster will hook into something that he or she will never forget just as I've never forgotten my first Carrot Pond Crucian.
