Feeding on to or on the bottom?

We had no idea whether today, when we rolled up at Hazel Court, it would be full, empty or half way. The weather wasn’t as good as it was when the ponds were full and we had to go Jim’s Pond, neither was it that bad that most had stayed away last week. Sunny and cloudy was the forecast with rain starting at four in the afternoon so we decided on a nine o’clock start and to leave around three thirty.

On arriving, before Wil could open the gate, the dogs found him and Griff seems to recognise him every week. Eventually we got parked up and could see four families or groups around the Pleasure Pond and an empty Reed Pond. For some time now, I’d thought about the Reed Pond being a rectangle, the far side of the pond being one of the short sides, and the corner of that side being completely covered in bushes for three metres either side, inaccessible, and an ideal spot for my margin pole.

We carried all the gear to the chosen spot and started setting up, Wil with his familiar method feeders, me with a pellet waggler rod with my catapult out and eight-millimetre pellets out of the pellet safe and in a small tub.

Then all hell let loose.

The two, white, farmyard geese were minding their own business when three Canadian geese landed near them in the middle of the reed pond. As if to protect their territory, the white geese honked and the Canadians took exception to their actions and they were brutal. The Canadians fought the white geese to the point that white feathers were flying everywhere and not only were the Canadians bigger, it was also three against two. White geese were being forced under the water and at one point we believed that one had drowned but it came up again onto the surface some ten feet away, proving that geese can swim under water.

It was an unfair fight and maybe nature should be left alone to take care of itself, but these white geese had become a bit of a fixture at Hazel Court. My only weapon was my catapult and I started to aim eight-millimetre pellets at the Canadians, Wil took the small landing net and started waving it around near the fight as if he was trying to net a goose. What he would have done if he had netted one, nobody knows.

The Canadian geese left not only the Reed Pond but the whole fishery and didn’t come back that day. The white geese came up onto the banking, probably to rest, and then Debbie the fishery owner arrived to ask what was happening, because she’d heard the commotion and come as soon as she could. As we explained, she just stared at the white feathers all over the pond. As compensation to the white geese, Wil and I decided to use pellets and wafters only and he fed a whole tin of sweetcorn to them.

Finally, we started fishing. I spent around half an hour catapulting pellets out into the water and casting the self-loading pellet waggler into the commotion made, imagining the non-weighted line slowly taking the banded pellet down with the other pellets. The idea was that after half an hour I’d change to my pole down the edge, so every time I fed my pellet waggler swim twice, I fed the margin once.

Wil had his method feeders on the alarmed rod-pod and each was covered in sticky pellets concealing a wafter and would hopefully bring fish in by being covered in pink haze. During the whole day he had one missed bite and one fish that threw the hook on the way in.

My pellet waggler, on the other hand, caught two silver-skimmer bream, one taking the bait as soon as the pellet hit the surface of the pond. This, in retrospect, should have indicated that the fish (or at least the bream) were feeding high up in the water.

The next bite came from a fish that had taken it not on the drop, because the pellet had been left out too long while I was taking a drink. It had hooked itself and before I could control it, the fish was in the reeds and eventually broke my hook-length.

Meanwhile, my pole was being shipped out with an eight-millimetre banded pellet and dumped over the float was cupped four pellets of the same size, a dollop of micro pellets soaked in fish oil and the cup topped up with the mixture of golden-brown and green groundbait. This produced a common carp of only around a pound and a rudd of about twelve ounces, whereas the waggler, close in accounted for a common carp of around two pounds.

With everything packed away, as we started to leave the complex, it started raining right on cue. There was no steaming up of windows as there had been after last weeks thunder storm and we had an enjoyable drive home where we contemplated the day’s fishing. I had caught five fish, all smaller than usual, Wil had blanked. We couldn’t say that the fish were feeding high in the water and avoiding Wil’s method feeders because some of my fish had been caught on the bottom. We knew that Debbie had told us that things were slow and she wondered if the cold nights were affecting the fishing.

We decided that we should be more adaptable throughout the day. I had been missing bites today using size twelve hooks and changed down to size fourteen and that resulted in catches. When both of Wil’s method feeders failed then maybe he should have changed one to a pop up and bomb and fished with the pop up on the surface and descending six inches at a time to see if he could find a feeding depth.

I even had one crazy idea. Because I had used a pellet waggler rod and a top-kit on my pole down the edge, why not utilise the longer-than-normal top kits by setting one up as a fish-to-hand system with the banded pellet and hook at the base of the top kit, a self-cocking pellet waggler three feet above it and the rest as a long lash up to the pole tip. Could this be used to swing out and be a pellet waggler at a distance of eleven or twelve metres? Could I feed a margin using one top kit and a cup, plus another swim around three metres out from it with pellets catapulted out?

My theory was that the catapulted pellets could draw fish in because of the splash, not all the sinking pellets would be eaten, later on the bottom feeding carp might come in and eat the rest of the pellets and they’d find them in both swims. Maybe this was an experiment for the pleasure pond because the Reed Pond had not really produced for us today.