The Tuesday between Christmas and New Year looked okay but cold so we ventured out to Warren Mill with minimal gear and were right to not take too much with us. On arrival and looking over the car park wall, it was obvious that the first half of the mill pond was frozen over. On the right-hand side of the pond, from the ice to the island each peg was occupied by families out to get fresh air, or maybe use new fishing equipment they’d had for Christmas. We walked up to the island and cast, underarm, our huge method feeders some fifteen feet into the area between the bank and the island, with no expectations.
When Bampa got bored, he went for a walk to see how far around the island you could get, and on returning he told me this. “Up ahead there’s a bridge across another stream coming into the pond, and after that it’s boggy and you need wellies. After that it becomes difficult and you have to duck under fallen trees before getting to the place where I stopped. I stopped because the path suddenly went upwards and it looked higglley-piggledy from there onwards. I came back and couldn’t imagine trying to get fishing tackle around there, not in the winter anyway.”
We only stayed a matter of an hour or two and decided to leave. A father and son combo that we’d chatted to were using bomb and maggots so Bampa gave the lad five maggot feeders that we’d never used.
Having packed the car, we saw a notice we hadn’t seen last time, while exiting in the dark. It read, “Anglers fish from the pontoons at their own risk.” We noticed some timber structures near the gravel bank but on the left-hand side of the pond, had no idea if they were accessible from the road, but had no intention of trying anyway.
The weather from then on got colder, windier, and eventually it snowed a matter of a few miles north of us. Our normal fishing Tuesday was called off because night time temperatures had plummeted, so we figured the whole of Warren Mill Pond would be iced over. That weekend, Hazel Court Ponds were open for the first weekend of the month, and again we figured the ponds would be iced over. The following Tuesday was the day we had amber snow warnings and yellow wind warnings. We stayed indoors and watched the news about trees being uprooted all over the country. That took us to the thirteenth of January.
After all the atrocious weather, Tuesday thirteenth of January was forecast to be wet, but with air temperatures rocketing up to between six and ten degrees. Winds would be southerly but changing to westerly mid-afternoon, with air pressure over a thousand, but only just over. It was time to fish again. Let’s be clear though, with those air temperatures, the water temperatures would be a lot lower, especially after the entry of near freezing water entering ponds via streams and rain.
We plumped for Warren Mill again and on arrival, we were the only ones there, (bonkers?) and had the pond to ourselves. We decided to fish from the gravel bank that we’d described before but never fished from, so that we could get an all-round feel for the pond. Our previous idea of fishing the first spot we’d gone to where Bampa caught two commons, went out the window, because there were no flocks of Canada geese, so no thoughts of weed under the water to cast near to.
I set my rod-pod up to the left of me and tried for some minimal shelter from the rain from an oak that had shed all its leaves, and to cut a long story short, we had, at one time, five rods out in a fan pattern and didn’t get one bite all day.
It seemed the weather was still too cold for the carp and the bream that are supposed to be in the pond were not interested in our bait. We did however use the time wisely to set up a few experiments.
Bampa had two rods of the same make, one set up with a thirty gramme method feeder and one with the larger hundred gramme that we’d put on to gain that extra length in the cast. They both cast to roughly the same place. How did we know? Because Bampa wets his sticky pellets down with hemp oil, the hemp oil comes to the surface, it flattens any ripples in the water and produces a circle on calm water where the method feeder has landed.
It was time for me to experiment. I loaded up a one hundred gramme method feeder with oiled sticky pellets, added pink haze, and using wellies to get out a few feet into the pond, dropped the feeder into clear water. Shock number one was that the pink haze disappeared completely as if it was never there. The hemp oil came to the surface immediately and we wondered if it served any purpose other than a marker, and the sticky pellets broke down straight after the feeder hitting the bottom of the pond. With the breakdown of the pellets came the release of the wafter which, because it was on. a four-inch hook-length, it sat four inches off the bottom looking like a barrage balloon and not natural.
Because we were determined to fish method feeders and wafters today, we’d left the pellet safe in the garage, but couldn’t help wondering whether an eight-millimetre pellet staying amongst the pile of sticky pellets would have been more successful on the day. Was it a wasted day? Well, experiments showed us a lot and emphasised the fact that we are still relative newbies and still learning, and anyway, getting out into the fresh, very fresh, air on a cold day, and pretending that you own a pond because you are the only ones on it, is something to behold.